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whichavar  applias. 


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illustrant  la  mAthodo. 


1  2  3 


1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

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MICROCOfY    MSOlUTK>N   TIST   CHART 

(ANSI  and  ISO  TEST  CHART  No    2) 


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^I2^f?-^^^^w5Z£5^»*^^5l5L     ItS^: 


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RABINDRANATH   TAGORE 


•Ut 


THE  \f\(  MILLAN  COMPANY 
MACMII.t.A.N  k  CO.  LiHinn 

tuMi.   ■(    .    liiitln^Y       .  AK  LfT* 

Ml  i.iiurisr. 

THE  MACMILLAN  (  O   ot  CANADA.  Lib. 


i 


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"sxsatfSt. 


Rabi\drav\th  T\<,oRr. 
From  .  photugraph  b\  JdIid   I  rt-sor. 


■-^WmS^^^SSiS^^-^-f^      m.       ^SSS^Ssir^^'m^.'^lS'Wc'W':i".'■■^i!^'^^^K'.:i^^^ 


S/r^. 


RABINDRANATH 
TAGORE 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  STUDY 


EY 


ERNEST   RHYS 


Nrat  fork 
THE  MACMILLAN  COMPAJfY 

1915 

AU  riiht!  rtsened 


^.mm-^^m^assf!* 


\.,i(i'>->niM-  ,X5V- 


~'iHr, 


C  iPYKI-HT,  I<)15 

Tv  TUZ  MACMH.LAN  COMPANY 
Set  lip  an  i  clectrotyped.    Published  April,  toi?. 


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I 

-9 


TO 

HILDE  SCHUSTER 

AND  TO  THE  MEMORY  OF 

ALFRED  SCHUSTER 

WHO  WED  FUR  lilS  COUNTRY 


'  Criete  not  for  ilu  ni  ii/..)  arc  to  uir,  /jr  c'/  thc.^f  are  but 
phantom  forms  tnou!J<\l  upon  that  One  Real  that  is  Slysdf, 
unborn,  unJyin,;,  that  neither  slays  nor  ian  be  slain." — 
"  Bhaeavad  Chita." 


^^Mui^M-^i::^^..,  ■:.. 


't-r*1l,":\ 


ETlr^^M^^^^^: 


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PREFACE 

"Nature  shut  her  hands  and  laughingly  asked 
every  day,  'What  have  I  got  inside?'  and  nothing 
seemed  impossible." 

These  words  from  Rabindranath  Tagore's  auto- 
biography, referring  to  the  eager  mornings  of 
his  early  boyhood,  may  serve  ns  key  to  the  fol- 
lowing account,  which  attempts  to  relate  him 
both  to  the  old  tradition  in  India  and  to  the 
new  day  anticipated  in  his  writings.  Such  as 
they  are,  the  chapters  that  succeed  must  be 
left  now  to  answer  for  themselves;  but  at  the 
last  moment  I  am  tempted  to  add  two  or  three 
passages.  For  since  this  book  was  written  things 
have  happened  which  have  sadly  changed  our 
perspective;  and  they  serve  to  recall  a  day, 
before  their  faintest  shadow  had  fallen,  when 
this  visitor  from  India,  lying  ill  in  London,  scanned 
the  omers  and  read  them  very  uneasily. 

It  was  one  of  the  rare  occasions,  during  his 

vii 


-S 


f^^s^^^^^tw:m^mmK'''^^f:^^ 


Vlll 


PREFACE 


visit,  when  we  were  able  to  talk  uninterruptedly 
about  the  state  of  India  and  our  own  affairs, 
and  he  spoke  with  alarm  of  the  temper  of  the 
great  nations  and   the  life  of    the  great  cities 
like  Paris  and  London,   whose  love  of  luxury, 
need  of  sensation,   and  craving  for  excitement 
were  up  against  every  finer  instinct  he  cherished. 
When  he  spoke  of  the  forces  in  the  Western 
world  which  he  thought  must  become  disruptive 
and  lead  to  trouble,  and  stretched  out  his  hands, 
it  might  have  been  the  moral  map  of  Europe,  with 
its  teeming  continent  and  restless  atoms,   that 
lay  spread  out  before  him.    The  major  energies, 
as  he  viewed  them,  were  not  constructive;  they 
did  not  make  for  the  world's  commonwealth, 
and  by  their  nature  they  raust  come  into  con- 
flict sooner  or  later. 

Now,  as  I  recall  that  afternoon— not  much 
more  than  a  twelvemonth  ago— it  is  impossible 
not  to  sec  in  the  present  war  the  grim  realisa- 
tion of  those  misgivings;  and  that  they  were  not 
the  passing  fancy  of  a  sick  man  is  sho\vn  by 
the  frequent  allusions  in  liis  own  pages  to  the 


PREFACE 


IX 


same  topic.  In  one,  occurring  in  S'uUtana,  he 
points  out  that  the  rival  energies  of  the  nations 
in  the  West  ten^l  to  become  aggressive.  They 
are  employed  "in  extending  man's  power  over 
his  surroundings,  and  the  peoples  are  straining 
every  nerve  upon  the  path  of  conquest;  they 
are  ever  disciplining  themselves  to  fight  Nature 
and  other  races;  their  armaments  are  getting 
more  and  more  stupendous  every  day;  their 
machines,  their  appliances,  their  organisations 
are  for  ever  multiplying.  ..."  The  ancient 
civilisation  of  India,  he  goes  on  to  say,  had  an- 
other ideal,  which  was  that  of  the  perfect  com- 
prehension of  all,  the  inclusion  of  every  element 
in  the  universe,  and  not  the  shutting  out  of 
any  atom  of  God's  creatures.  Man's  freedom  and 
his  fulfilment  were  not  to  be  gained,  in  that 
Eastern  belief,  through  war  and  the  argument 
of  the  strong  hand,  but  by  love. 

Once  Gautama,  we  arc  told,  saw  a  man  bow- 
ing to  the  Four  Quarters  of  tlie  Heavens,  the 
Nadir  and  the  Zenith.  It  was  an  olci  rite  he 
v/as  performing — 'Svith  streaming  hair,  -.vet  gar- 


7mm 


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X  PRKFACE 

ments  and  clasped  hands";  and  Buddha  knew 
he  was  doing  it  to  avert  evil,  and  told  him  there- 
upon that  the  true  way  to  guard  the  regions  of 
Heaven  and  Farth  was  by  showering  good  deeds 
all  around   him.     In   this  new  dispensation  he 
might  look  upon  his  father  and  mother  as  the 
East,   his   wife  and   children   as   the  West,   his 
masters  and  teachers  as  the  South,  his  friends 
and  companions  as  the  North,   the  saints  and 
religious  mystics  as  the  Zenith,  and  his  servants 
and  dependents  as  the  Nadir.     Could  one  have 
a  belter  reading  of  a  Symbol  for  the  law  of  human 
fellowship  and  a  love  wide  as  the  world? 

What,  then,  will  Buddha's  enlightened  fol- 
lowers say  to  our  latest  Gospel?  Kant  has  been 
in  his  grave  more  than  a  ccntur>',  and  the  latest 
word  of  the  philosophy  that  succeeds  to  his, 
we  are  told,  points  to  the  declaration:  "It  is 
not  enough  to  love  your  country.  You  must 
love  it  in  full  armour.  Evcrjlhing  that  is  not 
IT  must  be  hated.  Hate  is  sacred."  How  dif- 
ferent the  \-.)i.e  of  the  patriot  in  Gitanjali,  who 
speaks  of  a  region  "where  the  mind  is  without 


m^wk^^mms^.^snstPUWM^. 


s^rsas 


PREFACE 


x! 


fear  and  the  head  held  liigli,  where  the  world 
has  not  been  br<jkeu  up  int.)  fragments  by  nar- 
row walls,  where  the  mind  is  led  forward  into  ever- 
widening  thought  and  aclion: 

Into  that  heaven  of  freedom,  my  Father,  let  my  country 
awake! 

Beside  this  patriot-prayer  you  may  put  his 
song  of  "The  Woman  in  Sorrow,"  who,  like  the 
wife  of  the  murdered  Burgomaster,  was  not  to 
be  comforted  by  the  shout  of  conquest; 

I  seated  her  upon  u  cur  of  victory  and  drove  her  from  end 
to  end  of  the  earth. 

Conquered  hearts  bowed  down  at  her  feet ;  shouts  of  applause 
rang  in  the  sky. 

Pride  shone  in  her  eyrs  for  a  moment;  then  it  was  dimmed 
in  tears. 

"I  have  no  joy  in  conquest."  she  cried,  the  woman  in  sorrow. 

But  take  another  page  from  Sddhand — one 
which  is  not  veiled  in  yurable : 

"Whenever  some  ancient  civilisation  fell  into 
decay  and  died,  it  was  owing  to  causes  which 
produced  callousness  of  heart  and  led  to  the 
cheapening  of  man's  worth;  v.-hen  either  the 
stale  or  suiiic  poweriui  group  of  men  began  to 


I 


''^-W^^^i^Ji^i^Y^^^^^^^S^SSSt^ 


Ml 


PREFACE 


look  upon  the  jwople  as  a  mere  instrument  of 
lluir  power;  when,  hy  compelling  weaker  races 
lo  slavery  and  trying  to  keej)  them  down  by 
every  means,  man  struck  at  the  foundation  of 
Ills  greatness.  Civilisation  can  never  sustain 
itself  uiK)n  cannibalism  of  any  form." 

If  it  is  hard  for  us  now  to  read  a  book  or  listen 
to  p.)etr>'  without  thinkin-  ..f  battle,  murder  and 
sud.Jcii  death,  and  the  mortal  hatred  of  strug- 
.  .  /  nations,  yet  we  must  not  leave  this  mes- 
:  iU,'er  of  the  dawn  standing  fmally  in  a  vista  of 
v.ar.  Rather  let  us  turn  to  his  books  in  the  spirit 
of  a  letter  written  to  a  friend  in  England  about  a 
year  ago; 

"A  great  pleasure,"  he  said,  "to  imagine  you 
cutting  the  pages  of  my  new  book,  making  dis- 
co ver>'  of  some  poem  or  other  that  strikes  you 
with  some  new  suqjrise,  though  you  had  read 
it  before  in  the  manuscript.  I  am  sure  these 
poems  of  mine  are  not  mere  literature  to  you, 
but  convey  to  your  heart  the  living  voice  of 
a  friend  who  has  often  sat  b}-  your  side." 
The  same  letter  gives  a  winter  picture  of  the 


i 
I 


m 


^m'.^s^^m^^s^smis^j^^^^^mmLi^^s^^mmm^m 


PREFACI 


Xt;i 


writer'si  quarters  at  Sh.inti  y!kct;in:  "I  am 
writing  to  you  sittinj^  in  my  nw  m  »  i  i!u-  second 
fltx)r  of  this  hou.io;  a  swelling  st-u  (.1  folia;;e  is 
Sfcn  throuj^'h  the  o|)C'n  tloors  all  around  mt-, 
(|uivcringat  tin*  touch  of  thr  i-urly  winter's  l)riuth 
and  glistening  in  the  s.mshinc"  It  is  in  this 
familiar  guise  that  one  would  like  lust  to  imagine 
him,  a  poet  who  is  able  to  renew  for  us  the  sense 
of  life  in  its  energy  and  its  true  orient,  as  did  that 
older  poet  who  wrote  of  it   in  the  Ipanishads: 

"Whenever  H.*  sun  rises  and  sets,  shouts 
of  Hurrah!  arl.o  and  all  Ixings  come  to  life, 
and  wh(X'\cr  knows  this  and  thinks  of  the  sun 
as  divine  will  hear  those  happy  shoutings." 

Blake  might  have  imagined  that  and  St.  Fran  is 
thought  it,  and  it  is  a  message  that  is  welc  )tnc 
whenever  it  comes.  U  may  come  by  the  s;iinls 
and  it  may  come  by  the  poets;  and  if  in  this  book 
it  is  with  the  lallcr  kind  thai  Rubindranalh 
Tagorc  is  ranged,  it  is  because,  through  hi:,  lyric 
IK>wer,  he  is  most  likely  in  the  end  to  prove  its 


messenger. 


These  pages,  nnau}-,  owe  a  great  deal  to  the 


^ 


m 


I^^^Wi^    -. 


} 

'I  ,.' 

I  1- 


XIV 


PREFACE 


Hi 


It  ? 


Nil 


Iff  '■ 

lii      -i 


aid  of  their  Indian  and  other  contributors,  and 
in  particular  the  writer's  thanks  are  due  to  the 
Rev.  C.  F.  Andrews  and  Mr.  Kalimohun  Ghose 
of  Shanti  Niketan,  Dr.  Seal  of  Calcutta  Uni- 
versity, Mr.  G.  Bose,  Mr.  Dinesh  Chandra  Sen, 
Dr.  Coomaraswami,  and  Mr.  R.  Ranjan  Sen. 
Also  to  Mr.  William  Rothensteui  and  Mr.  W.  B. 
Yeats  for  biographical  and  critical  memoranda, 
"G.  R. "  for  contributions  to  variowis  chapters, 
Mr.  E.  B.  Ha  veil  for  invaluable  help  in  revising 
the  proofs,  Mr.  A.  H.  Fox  Strangways  for  infor- 
mation about  Indian  music,  and  the  India  Society 
for  copies  of  its  publications. 

It  is  hardly  necessary  to  add  anythmg  about 
the  honour  rendered  the  poet  by  the  Nobel  Prize 
award,  unless  to  say  that  it  was  due  to  a  dis- 
tinguished Swedish  Oricntahst  who  had  read 
the  poems  in  Bengali  before  they  appeared  in 
English.  India  greatly  appreciated  the  honour; 
as  for  the  author  himself,  he  was  at  first  over- 
whelmed by  the  pubhcity  it  brought:  "They 
have  taken  away  my  shelter,"  he  wrote. 
November  1914. 


-V.f 


CONTENTS 


I'RhKACE 


'X 


The  Unknown  Poet 


Boy  and  Man 


Some  Indun  Poets 


"The  Gardener" 


CHAPTER  I 


CIIAP'JER  II 


CHAPTER  III 


CHAPTER  IV 


CHAPTER  V 

Rabindranath  Tagore's  Short  Stories 


CHAPTER  VI 


The  Babe's  Par.\dise 


CHAPTER  \TI 


The  PlAY^VRiGUT 


PAGE 

vii 


•  • 


19 


31 


47 


65 


76 


XV 


•M" 


I  til: 


,x*-«5ii/. 


XVI 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 


CHAPTER  VIII 

"GlTANJAU"  AND  ClIAITANYA  DeVA      . 

CHAPTER  IX 

A  SriRHUAL  Commonwealth 

CHAPTER  X 

A  Book  OF  MEDirviioNS    . 


•  • 


Qi 


107 


.     116 


■I  J 

u 


SlUNTI  NlKETA.* 


Conclusion 


CHAPTER  XI 


CHAPTER  XII 


•  • 


^33 


151 


(   =f 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

Rabindranath   Tagore.     From   a   photograph   by   John 

Trevor frontispiece 

FACE  PAGE 

Al  Shanti  Niketan 

Reduced  Facsimile  Autograph  Poem  (loi,,) 

Rabinaranath  Tagore.     From  a  photograph  by  John 
Trevor         

Autograph  Poem  GitanjaU,  Bengah'  Text 

"The  place  where  the  great  sage  Maharshi  Dcve 
Nath  used  to  meditate"        .... 

Shanti  Niketan.— The  School        .... 

Rabindranath  Tagore  (May  6,  19 14).     From  a  photo- 
graph by  Johnston  &  Hoffmann       .... 


xui 
32 

48 
96 

112 
134 

152 


S\T1 


I 


J*     :' 

If  !;: 


4 

Tt 

i 


RABINDRANATH   TAGORE 


ill 


iH: 


'- "«  -Li' 


!  1 


ftl 


I'    I 

il 

11 


J 
.1 


:-» 

1 


CHAPTER  I 


THE  UNKNOWN  POET 

The  boughs  touched  his  feet  with  their  tribute  o''  leaf  and 
flower  and  fruit,  and  looked  as  if  they  welcoinetl  a  friend. — 
Chaitanya  Chakitamrita. 

In  talking  with  the  Indian  poets  you  will  find, 
said  one  of  our  early  Orientalists,  that  they  con- 
sider poetry  a  divine  art,  practised  for  untold 
ages  in  heaven  before  it  was  revealed  on  earth. 
Here  in  the  west  we  have  been  rather  forgetting 
latterly  the  old  inspirational  idea  of  poetrj', 
though  it  has  been  developed  anew  from  time  to 
time  by  writers  like  Spenser,  Coleridge  and 
Shelley;  and  it  is  good  for  us  to  hear  its  reminder 
from  a  new  quarter,  and  after  a  fashion  that  is 
better  than  any  prose  argument — in  inspired 
verse  itself.  Such  reminders,  when  they  come,  are 
apt  to  fall  naturally  without  any  noise  or  loud 
creaking  of  the  press;  and  just  so  quietly  it  was 
that  the  first  signs  were  heard  of  Rabmdranath 
Tagore's  poetry  in  our  western  world. 
At  an  Indian  play,  given  two  autimms  ago 


RABINI)Ri\NATH  TAGORi: 


CM. 


'.  H 


on  a  London  stage,  my  next  neiglibour,  a  stranger 
to  mc  and  a  native  of  Bengal,  asked  me  if  I  liad 
read  any  of  the  other  writings  of  the  play\vright? 
He  went  on  to  si)eak  of  these  writings,  verse  and 
prose,  with  the  enthusiasm  of  a  disciple:  in  a  way, 
indeed,  to  make  t>ne's  ears  tingle.  His  account 
had  tl;e  effect  of  the  tuning  up  of  the  fiddles  before 
the  actual  music;  or  it  was  like  that  passage  in  the 
Vcdic  Hymn  which  speaks  of  the  coming  of  the 
poet — the  long-e.\i)ectcd  jioet  who  has  the  gift  of 
the  supernal  tongue.  Within  a  w' ek  or  two,  one 
Sunday  afternoon,  my  fellow-playgoer  brought, 
according  to  prunase,  a  volume  o*"  the  new  poetry 
in  the  original  Bengali,  along  with  some  transla- 
tions, and  read  them  to  us.  None  of  us  who 
listened  to  the  recital  could  understand  the 
liquid  tongue  in  which  the  songs  were  written; 
but  their  rhythm  was  full  of  melody,  and  the 
English  versions  pointed  to  an  imagination, 
innocent  but  rich  in  figurative  life;  while  the 
reader's  delight  in  them  was  infectious.  Open 
belief  in  a  poet  is  not  often  seen  among  us,  and 
there  was  in  this  boyish  tribute  an  ingenuous 
exuberant  air  which  recalled  the  saying  in  the 
Upanishads:  "If  you  were  to  tell  this  to  a  Iry 
stick,  branches  and  leaves  would  grow  out  of  it." 


if 
ii  4 


THK   UNKNOWN    POKT 


A  few  months  later,  when  the  [XK-t  returned  to 
Englaml,  we  were  able  to  realise  for  ourselves 
s»-inething  of  the  spirit  in  him  that  ..iTeeted  his 
followers  of  the  new  generation  in  India,  and  his 
readers  both  there  and  here. 

One  of  them  allows  me  to  quote  some  of  her 
impressions  written  at  the  time:  "ilis  is  an  aspect 
that  fixes  itself  deeply  in  that  uncertain  medium, 
the  retina  of  the  memory.  It  is  easy  to  call  up  at 
any  moment  a  mental  picture  of  that  tall  and 
graceful  form  in  the  long  loose  roat  of  grey-brown; 
the  white  sensitive  hands,  large  seren«'ly-lit  eyes, 
noble  features,  and  curling  hair  and  beard,  dark 
and  lightly  touched  with  grey.  Al)ove  all,  the 
stately  simplicity  of  his  bearing  stnick  me,  for  it 
implied  a  spiritual  quality  that  dilTused  itself 
about,  his  presence.  The  same  thing  helped  to 
make  him  the  kindest  of  hosts  and  gentlest  of 
guests.  Add  to  these  (jualiliLS  a  certain  incal- 
culable gaiety;  and  you  will  still  fail  to  understand 
his  immense  ])ersonal  intluence  among  his  own 
people."  The  same  writer  adds:  "You  know  that 
when  at  Calcutta  he  is  announced  ^o  speak  in  a  hall 
or  public  building,  if;  is  surrounded  by  crowds  for 
whom  th^re  is  no  i)lacc  within  and  who  listen 
outside  for  the  sound  of  his  voice.     Il   would 


P  h" 


RABINDRANATH  TAGORK 


oi. 


i  i> 


be  impossible  to  exaggerate  his  vogue  in  his 
own  land;  and  as  for  his  sr)ngs~thcy  are  sung, 
words  and  music,  through  the  length  and  breadth 
of  India." 

On  one  occasion  in  London,  after  the  reading 
of  the  poet's  play  CItitra,  Mr.  Montague,  the 
Under  Secretary  of  State  for  India,  described 
how,  when  riding  through  an  Indian  forest  at 
night,  he  came  ui)on  a  clearing  where  two  or 
three  men  sat  round  a  fire.  Not  being  certain 
of  his  road,  he  was  glad  to  dismount  and  rest 
his  tired  horse.  Shortly  after  he  had  joined  the 
group,  a  poor-looking,  ill-clothed  lad  came  out 
of  the  forest  and  sat  down  also  at  the  fire.  First 
one  of  the  men  sang  a  song  and  then  another. 
The  boy's  turn  came,  and  he  sang  a  song  more 
beautiful  both  in  words  and  music  than  the  rest. 
When  asked  who  had  made  the  song  he  said  that 
he  did  not  know;  "they  were  singing  these  songs 
everywhere."  \  while  after,  Mr.  Montague 
heard  the  words  and  music  again,  this  time  in  a 
very  different  place,  and  when  he  asked  for  the 
name  of  the  maker  of  the  song  he  heard  for  the 
first  time  the  name  of  Rabindranath  Tagore. 

Knowing    the    extraordinary    fame    that    this 
story   suggests— a   fame   implying   the   si)iril   of 


,  THE  UNKNOWN   POKT  5 

a  religious  teacher,  moreover,  as  well  as  that 
of  a  p<xH — we  had  bet  n  almost  afraid  of  rcrciv- 
inj?  such  a  ^uest  in  our  (lr>'  unicromoniouH  Knj^lish 
fashion.  Hut  nothing  could  exceed  tlie  simplicity 
and  unpretentiousness  of  this  visitor  from  an 
older  world.  He  was  content  to  take  t!iin;,'s  as  he 
found  them,  and  did  not  exjUH  t  one  to  discourse 
all  day  on  philosophy  or  on  the  doctrines  of  the 
Upanishada.  He  could  tell  delightful  stories,  gay 
or  sad;  he  had  the  humour  that  eould  take  i)leasato 
in  the  incongruifiis  of  men;  and  he  could  on  rarer 
occasions  he  prevailed  upon  to  sinj^  his  son;;s 
to  the  veritable  wild  and  beautiful  Indian  melodiis 
out  of  which  they  were  born.  At  other  times,  if 
the  English  sun  was  only  good  enough  to  shine,  it 
was  pleasure  enough  for  him  to  sit  on  the  grass  in  a 
Hampstead  garden  and  listen  to  the  noises  of  the 
town  carried  over  the  nujfs  and  tree-tops.  His 
understanding  of  life,  his  a'ceplance  of  its  cares, 
his  delight  in  its  common  occurrences,  were  not 
those  we  had  hitherto  associated  with,  the  notion 
of  an  Indian  ascetic.  If  there  was  that  in  his  face 
and  expression  which  told  of  a  peace  wuii  by  hard 
and  long  probation  and  a  disc  ipline  li!:c  thai  of 
the  Yogi  who  despised  the  llesh,  it  only  remained 
uuvv  as  a  quaiily  added  to  his  syiri[>atriy. 


4 


RAinNDRANATH    lAliORE 


til. 


"i  I) 


Those  who  haw  road  his  |)<>cms  in  Gitanjtli 
and  T/ii'  i'lanlimr,  and  liavc  fathomed  the  philos- 
ophy of  life's  realisations  expressed  in  the  pages  of 
Siid/ianil,  may  wonder  what  impressions  a  great 
city  like  I.,ondon  would  leave  on  the  mind  of  a 
poet  rearetl  amc?ng  such  dilTerent  surroundings? 
After  many  experiences  here  and  ij.  merica,  he 
was  left,  1  fear,  with  an  uneasy  sense  of  the  life  of 
our  great  cities.  The  spei  tacle  of  multitudes  of 
men  and  women  avid  for  sensation,  one  I'nd  all 
bent  upon  fit  I  in;;  and  gaining  advantage  over 
tln'ir  neighbours,  troubled  him.  It  gave  an 
ominous  turn  to  a  casual  discussion  that  began  one 
day  when  he  had  ♦'  en  ill  and  was  1;  ing  in  bed 
convalesc  ent,  in  a  room  full  of  flowers,  with  a  tell- 
tale glimpse  through  the  windows  of  an  ordinary 
dull  London  street  on  a  wet  .summei  s  afternoon. 
He  had  been  reading  that  ix)wcrful  romance  of  an 
artist  at  odds  with  circumstance  who  has  to  fight 
hard  for  his  art  in  the  greedy  world  of  Paris,  Jean 
Chrisiophc;  and  he  was  curiously  concerned  at  the 
piclurc  of  a  soul  in  tiDMbl. ,  .md  at  the  conditions 
of  Jifv'  whi'.'h  v.enl  lo  dcLtiniine  that  trouble, 
di-[)la>ed  m  i!ic  pnges  -J-  llse  book.  "Vou  i)CopIc 
u'.cr  here,"  he  said,  '>■  cm  to  nic  to  be  all  in  a  state 
01    continuai   stnie.      it   is  aii   stiuggliiig,   hard 


THli   UNkNUWN   VULT 


striving  to  llvf.  Tlit  rc  h  rm  plan-  for  rtst,  or 
{R'aic  of  mind,  or  that  nu'diUilivv  rili<f  which  in 
our  country  wc  fcil  to  \y  iiccdcd  for  the  health  of 
our  spirits." 

In  much  the  s;ime  dtgrct-  in  uhiih  uur  noisy 
activity  over  here  alTvclcd  hiiii,  he  was  ai>lo  to 
afTect  US  in  turn  by  the  iinpcrluri)al)le  jK'ate  of 
his  own  bcaritig.  lie  sci  mcd  to  liave  tlic  power 
to  make  an  ordinary  roof.j,  a  London  house,  a 
lecture  hall,  a  com[>any  of  jK-opk-,  i\w  vehitk-  of 
his  Indian  serenity.  Hi-  wesil  ihrouj^li  many 
(Kcasions,  oflen  vciy  trying,'  ores,  without  losing 
his  equanimity,  altiiough  he  ilid  lose  his  |)owers 
of  work. 

There  was  one  occasion  in  particular  whiih 
may  be  recalled  because  there  were  elements 
in  it  that  brou.;li»  Fist  .uid  Wc  '  'nto  new  rela- 
tions. The  Indian  students  over  here,  many  of 
them  his  disciples,  had  rcs.ived  to  hold  a  festival 
in  his  honour,  and  in  doiiij  this  were  able  to  take 
advantage  of  the  presence  in  London  of  Sanijini 
Naidu,  a  fellow-poet  and  aw  clocjuent  ujjholder  of 
the  ideals  of  Young  India.  Tiiore  is  no  way  to 
describe  the  enthusiasm  of  an  occasion  that 
depends  for  its  fervour  on  the  very  voice  and  spirit 
of  the  hour.     But  by  the  naturalness  of  his  re- 


^K^>^Z 


8 


RABIXDRANATH  TAC.ORE 


CH.  I 


i 


sponsc,  Rabindnmath  was  able  to  cast  his  spell 
over  the  phu  o,  and  fo  make  that  ungainly  interior 
at  riccadilly  Circus,  with  its  strangely  mixed 
audience,  English  and  Indian,  into  a  scene  such 
as  one  might  associate  with  his  own  life  at  Bolpur 
and  the  quiet  of  Shanti  Xiketan.  And  what  was 
not  least  imjiressive  was  his  recognition  that  it 
was  for  his  own  people  first  of  all  that  he  made 
his  songs, — represented  by  the  crowd  of  his  disci- 
ples wlio  stood  (here  listening  to  him.  They 
formed  indeed  an  extraordinary'-  line  of  intent 
faces — "a  hedge  of  eyes" — and  it  was  well  his 
foreign  friends  should  take  part  in  such  a  functi(»n 
because  there  we  were  able  to  realise  something  of 
what  he  meant  to  his  Indian  followers.  He  was 
to  them  not  so  much  a  poet,  a  creator  of  delightful 
and  living  literary  forms  which  could  express  their 
own  hopes  and  aspirations;  he  was  a  national 
leader  who  had  already  set  up  in  Bengal  an  ideal 
college — "a  little  Academe" — whose  pupils  and 
students  were  to  go  forth  to  help  in  the  task  of 
deliv<Ting  the  soul  of  a  new  India.  It  was  so  that 
the  disciples  of  Pragapati  might  have  hung  upon 
his  words,  as  we  read  in  the  Upanishads. 


CHAPTER  II 


BOY  AN!> 


.N 


I 

I 
i 


•■a 


i 


"Please,  sii   ••  'I  ,^^o  ^ii!l  ..lo"-  ,''  s.il-^  tlic  son. 
"Be  it  so,  my  chilu,'  l:.^  father  replied. 

rpanishod. 

Rabindranath  Tagore  was  born  In  Calcutta 
in  1861,  son  of  the  Maharshi  Dcvcndranath 
Tagore,  who  gave  lustre  to  a  name  already  hon- 
oured throughout  India.  As  for  the  surname, 
changed  familiarly  over  here  into  Tagore,  it  is  in 
the  original  "Thukur,"  which  means  literally  a 
god  or  a  lord.' 

He  lost  his  mother  when  he  was  si  ill  a  child, 
and  this  loss  meant  a  great  deal  to  him.  It  gave 
him  a  peculiar  regret  for  the  mother's  love,  so 
sharply  broken  off  in  his  experience;  and  furtlier, 
it  threw  him  back  upon  the  consolations  to  be 
had  in  that  boyish  communion  with  Nature  which 
helped  to  fill  the  solitary  days  of  his  childhood. 
Hear  his  own  account  of  these  years,  as  given  to  a 
friend:  ^ 

'"You  may  hear  a  Bengal  villager  say  at  any  time,  'O 
Thakur,  forgive  me.'" 
*  Rev.  C.  F.  Andrews. 


1 


J II 


u 


\l\ 


lO 


RABINDRANATH  TAGORE 


CH. 


*  I  was  very  lonely — that  was  the  chief  feature 
of  my  childhood.  My  father  I  saw  very  seldom; 
he  was  away  a  great  deal,  but  his  presence  per- 
vaded the  whole  house  and  was  one  of  the  deepest 
influences  on  my  life.  Kept  in  charge  of  the  serv- 
ants after  my  mother  died,  I  used  to  sit,  day  after 
day,  in  front  of  the  window  and  picture  to  myself 
what  was  going  on  in  the  outer  world.  From  the 
very  first  time  I  can  romoniber  I  was  passionately 
fond  of  Xature.  Ah,  it  used  to  make  me  mad 
with  jov  when  I  saw  the  rl(vjds  come  up  in  the 
sky  one  by  one.  I  felt,  even  in  those  very  childish 
days,  that  I  was  surrounded  with  a  friend,  a 
companionship,  very  intense  and  very  intimate, 
though  I  did  not  know  how  to  name  it.  I  had  such 
an  exceeding  love  for  Nature,  I  cannot  tell  how  to 
describe  it  to  you;  but  >sature  was  a  kind  of  loving 
comi)anion  always  with  me,  and  always  revealing 
to  me  some  fresh  beauty." 

A  passage  in  liis  Givansmriti,  or  "Reminiscen- 
ces," completes  the  picture  of  a  child's  solitary 
life. 

"In  the  m(>rning  of  autumn,"  he  writes,  "I 
would  run  into  the  garden  the  moment  I  got 
up  fiom  sleep.  A  scent  of  leaves  and  grass,  wet 
v.iih  dew,  seemed  to  embrace  me,  and  the  dawn, 


BOY  AND  MAN 


II 


all  tender  i  id  fresh  with  the  new  awakened  rays 
of  the  sun,  held  out  its  face  to  me  to  greet  me 
beneath  the  trembling  vesture  of  palm  leaves. 
Nature  shut  her  hands  and  laughingly  asked  every 
day, '  VVIiat  have  I  got  inside? '  and  notliing  seemed 
impossible." 

As  for  the  school-days  that  followed,  he  told 
us  how  cruelly  one  of  his  masters  used  to  treat 
him,  ordering  him  to  stand  for  hours  unpro- 
tected in  the  heat  of  the  burning  sun  if  his  lessons 
had  not  been  perfectly  learned.  In  this  way 
education  was  made  to  seem  forbidding  instead  of 
agreeable  to  the  boy's  natural  desire  for  knowl- 
edge. When  his  father  came  to  understand  how 
much  he  was  made  to  suffer  by  the  harsh  dis- 
cipline, he  was  put  under  the  care  of  private  tutors. 
In  other  ways  the  father  gave  the  boy  his  head, 
as  we  might  say,  to  his  immense  advantage.  For, 
far  from  being  slow  or  unwilling  to  learn,  here 
was  one  eager  for  learning.  Words  and  ideas, 
music  and  old  tunes  and  ragas,  moved  liim  to  the 
heart;  and  while  still  a  boy  he  began  to  write 
rhymes,  songs,  stories— anything  that  could  ex- 
press his  joy  of  life.  It  is  not  suq:)rising  that  most 
of  his  early  verse  was  imitative:  he  began,  we  are 
told,  with  a  study  and  imitation  of  the  old  \''iish- 


.*>1 


12 


RABINDRANATH  TAGORE 


CH. 


nava  poets  of  Ben  m1,  Chandidas  am'  .lypati: 
l)ut  his  full  bir'h  a-  an  original  poet  began  about 
the  age  of  eighteen.  Nature  then  took  stronger 
hold  o  him,  and  the  outcome  is  to  be  seen  in 
his  eari>  songs  which  arc  to  be  found  in  the 
two  series,  Pravata-Sangila  and  Sandliya-Sangita 
("Songs  of  Sunrise"  and  "Songs  of  Sunset")- 
Their  character,  highly  idealistic  and  subjective, 
moody  or  fanciful,  may  be  gathered  from  the 
criticism  of  Dr.  Seal: 

■'/Vlong  with  the  waxing  and  waning  light, 
the  rising  or  setting  sun,"  he  writes,  "come 
floating  to  the  poet's  soul  aerial  phantasms  and 
drowsy  enchantments,  memories  of  days  of  fancy 
and  fire,  ghostly  visitings  and  flashes  of  Maenad- 
like  inspiration,  which  the  poet  seizes  in  many 
a  page  of  delicate  silver-lined  introspection  or 
imaginative  verse.  In  these  songs  Bengali  poetry 
rises  to  the  height  of  neoromanticism." 

The  very  titles  of  the  "Evening  Songs"  un- 
mistakably define  their  note  of  foreboding  and 
the  young  poet's  melancholy, — "Despair  in 
Hope,"  "Suicide  of  a  Star,"  "Invocation  to 
Sorrow,"  "The  Woman  without  a  Heart," 
"Heart's  Monody."  According  to,/ the  same 
friendly  critic,  the  mtense  egoism  and  subjective 


BOY  AND   MAN 


13 


3 

I 


I 


feeling  of  these  songs  is  without  a  parallel  in  mod- 
ern Indian  poctr^'.  "The  singer  indeed  appears  to 
be  under  the  inlluence  of  a  poetic  henotheism,  that 
is  to  say  the  entire  universe  assumes  the  hue  of  the 
poet's  mood,  while  it  lasts,  giving  rise  to  a  kind  of 
universal  hallucination." 

"The  Songs  of  Sunrise,"  which  came  later, 
are  in  a  braver  key,  and  the  themes  are  more 
auspiciously  conceived,— ''The  Dream  of  the 
Universe,"  ''The  Eternity  of  Life,"  "Reunion 
with  Nature,"  "Dcsideria,"  and  "The  Fountain 
awakened  from  its  Dream."  The  second  of 
these,  with  its  three  realms  of  Song,  Love,  and 
Life,  is  a  remarkable  poem,  which  (says  Dr. 
Seal)  just  misses  reaching  the  height  of  Goethe's 
"Three  Reverences,"  or  De  Quincey's  "Three 
Ladies  of  Sorrow."  A  companion  poem,  "The 
Eternity  of  Death,"  seizes  the  truth  that  life 
itself  is  realised  through  a  series  of  changes  or 
deaths,  but  strains  the  theme  through  too  vague 
an  emotional  medium. 

Of  the  place  these  lyrics  hold  in  the  neoromantic 
moxement  in  India  it  is  impossible  for  us  over 
here  to  judge.  They  gained  their  effect  by  the 
sheer  power,  it  seems,  of  an  individual  style  in 
T)oetry  which  used  elemcntar\'  feelings  and  imagf?. 


-S  '  ^1 


14. 


14 


R.\BINDRAXA1H  TAGORE 


CH. 


i. 


1f| 


to  cITcct  the  required  transfiguration;  and  they 
api>ear  to  have  brought  about  sijmethin;.;  like  a 
revolution  in  the  diction  and  the  freer  cadence  of 
Bengali  verse.  Here,  too,  should  be  mentioned 
Rabindranath's  work  in  another  mode,  his  highly 
imaginative  reconstruction,  under  the  name  of 
Vaiitt  Sinha,  of  the  loves  of  Radhika  and  Krishna 
on  the  banks  of  the  Jumna,  whl(  h  has  been  likened 
to  the  reproduction  of  medieval  Italian  romance 
by  Keats.  Those  who  have  followed  t  he  prose  and 
verse  of  the  movement  from  which  it  sprang,  and 
know  what  Neo-Hinduism  meant  for  the  young 
poets  of  thirty  years  ago,  can  alone  relate  it  for  us 
to  its  period.  But  Navina  Chandra  Sen's  Raka- 
tdka,  which  is  the  epic  of  the  Hindu  religious  re- 
vival, is  still  a  closed  book  to  us  in  England. 
As  for  the  Valmikir  Jaya,  or  *'The  Three  Forces" 
(physical,  intellectual,  and  moral),  of  Haraprasada 
Shastri — "the  most  glorious  phantasmagoria"  in 
Inaian  literature,  touched  with  the  subhmity  of 
the  Himalayas, — it  is  to  us  only  a  name,  remote  as 
their  heights.  With  the  literary  enthusiasms  and 
romantic  ideas  that  these  works  of  his  contem- 
poraries recall  ends  the  first,  or  Calcutta  period,  of 
his  career. 
The  second  period  v/as  spent  av/ay  from  cities, 


^^^^^^ 


n 


BOY  AND  M.\N 


IS 


and  began  with  his  marriage  at  the  age  of  twenty- 
three.  Then  came  the  fjucstion  of  facing  real  life. 
His  father,  the  Maharshi,  had  designed  he  should 
p,o  to  the  countr>'  to  manage  the  family  estate  at 
Shilaida  on  ♦  he  banks  of  the  (langes.  Much  against 
his  first  inclination,  he  went  to  his  task  there;  but 
it  proved  of  direct  service  to  him  in  the  way  of 
human  experience.  For  there  he  came  into  touch 
with  the  real  life  of  the  people,  and  wrote  down, 
hot  from  the  life,  talcs  and  parables  dealing  with 
their  everj'day  affairs.  There,  too,  he  wrote  some 
of  his  greater  plays,  among  them  "Chitvargada," 
"Visayan,"  and  "Raja-o-Rani." 

His  familiar  surroundings,  and  the  kind  of 
existence  they  helped  to  colour  at  this  time, 
may  be  found  reflected  in  pages  of  The  Gardener, 
and  in  some  of  the  stories  outlined  or  retold  in  a 
succeeding  chapter,  "The  Tale-Teller."  This 
Shilaida  period  lasted  in  all  some  seventeen 
years. 

Then  came  a  break — what  he  learnt  to  look 
upon  as  his  Varslia  Shcsha,  or  "fall  of  the  year." 
It  was  indeed  the  end  of  his  mid-summer.  Death 
came  and  looked  him  in  the  face:  he  lost  first  his 
beloved  wife;  then,  within  a  very  few  months,  from 
coiibUiiipLion,  the  daughter  who  took  her  place; 


jk 


i6 


RABINDRANATH  TAGORE 


en. 


'i     r 


M 


and  then  his  youngest  son.  He  was  on  the  verge, 
too,  of  his  fortieth  year— a  time  when  a  man  needs 
to  gather  his  own  folk  about  him.  A  premonition 
of  trouble  had  come  to  him  not  many  months 
before,  when  he  had  given  up  his  stewardship 
at  Shilaida. 

"He  seemed,"  says  his  biographer,  "to  antici- 
pate some  vast  sorrow  and  change,  for  which 
these  quiet  unbroken  years  in  the  country  had 
been  a  solemn  preparation." 

The  outcome  of  the  restlessness  that  seized 
upon  him  was  a  determination  to  do  something, 
while  his  energies  still  held  good,  for  the  new 
generation.  Hence  the  idea  of  the  small  republic 
at  Shanti  Niketan.  In  the  midst  of  the  work 
needed  to  initiate  the  project,  his  troubles  camj 
fast  upon  him;  the  book  that  expresses  them  and 
their  dire  effect  is  Gilanjali,  the  book  1)y  which  we 
first  learnt  to  know  him  in  England.  One  set 
of  lyrics  in  especial— Xos.  83  to  93 — marks  the 
probation  that  seemed  to  teach  him  the  second 
deliverance  of  which  the  Upanisliads  speak. 

"This  death-time,"  li-  said,  "was  a  blessing 
to  me.  I  had  through  it  all,  day  after  day,  si!ch 
a  sense  of  fulfihncnt,  of  completion,  as  if  nothing 
were  lost.     I  leit  that  if  t;ven  a  bingle  atom  in 


A. '  r^:^Mi^>jf.fjik'^^m:su:M^miATi\^  j^*  ^:"  r 


BOY  AND  MAX 


17 


■1 


the  univcrso  seemed  l(  st,  it  would  i.ot  really  be 
lost.  ...  I  knew  now  what  Death  was.  It 
was  perfection-nothing  lost!" 

With  GitaujaH  we  are  within  reach  of  his 
second  \ihil  to  the  west.  He  has  recognised  that 
his  setting  sail  on  this  later  Noyage  to  England 
and  America  was  to  make  a  change  in  his  outlook. 
"As  I  crossed  the  Atlantic  and  spent  on  board  shij) 
the  beginning  of  the  new  year,"  he  wrote  in  a 
letter  at  the  lime,  "I  realised  that  a  new  stage  in 
my  life  had  come,  the  stage  of  a  voyager."  And 
this  voyage  again  was  associated  inevitably  with 
constructive  social  ideas  and  the  work  at  Shanti 
Niket:in,  designed  to  aid  in  the  building  up  of 
a  Gohicn  Bengal  and  the  hope  of  the  new  Indies. 

With  most  of  us,  at  such  a  pause  m  our  lives, 
the  Search  for  reality  ends  in  our  adjusting  our- 
selves m;)re  or  less  comfortably  to  the  work-a-day 
world.  We  i  t  our  relative  cfTect  by  money, 
position,  and  the  good  opinion  of  the  community; 
and  at  iriicuUc-agc  settle  into  our  hole,  and  accept 
paper-solutions  of  the  problems  of  our  time.  It  is 
(liiferent  with  those  who  can  renew  their  youth, 
and  gain  a  fresh  access  cf  power  at  the  very  bar- 
riers of  middle  age.  Such  was  the  reinforcement 
liiat  occurred  to  this  poet  who  came  out  of  his 


1 8 


RAniN'DRAWTII  TACORi: 


(II   n 


II 


grief  to  fitKl,  ;is  Srim.mt.i  did,  ilu-  lotus-flou-crs 
bl(M)mirig  in  tliescu-wa.stc  thai  had  thaMlcnnl  him. 
He  read  the  slf^ns  anew  with   the  eoiiraj^'e  t)f 
a  seaman  who  is  kindred   to  the  wild  ekmeiit, 
and  holds  it  his  friend  v  halever  it  brings  him  — 
life  or  death?     In  another  letter  of   this   time 
he   uses  a   phrase   whith  gains  elTeet    from   the 
weight   he  has  lent    it-  the   "making  of  man." 
It   is  so  that   CVIlie   folk   will   sonutimes  speak 
of  "making  the  soul."     But  now  it  was  the  soul 
of  the  world  that  was  to  be  made;  and  to  briiig 
about  such  a  renaissance,  then-  was  needed,  in  his 
conception,  a  more  humane  order,  a  liner  science  *  f 
life,  .;rij  a  spiritual  republic  bilund  our  world- 
politics.     We  may  venture  to  enlarge  his  hoj)c 
as  we  think  it  over,  and  to  connect  it  with  that 
other —the  binding  in  one  commonwealth  of  the 
United  States  of  the  World.    The  union  cf  nations, 
the   destroying   of   caste,    religious   pride,    race- 
hatred, and  race-prejudice — in  a  word,  the  "Mak- 
ing of  Man";  there  lies  his  human  aim.    "It  is," 
he  says,  "the  one  problem  of  the  present  age,  and 
we  must  be  prepared  to  go  thnjugh  the  martyrdom 
of  sufTerings  and  humiliations  till  the  victory  of 
God  in  man  is  achieved." 


i^a^tnSf^^ 


CHAPTER  III 


SOMr:    INDIAN   POKTS 

We  miLst  gel  Bengal  in  a  homelier  persi^c- 
livc,  and  tall  it  (laur  as  ihc  Hindu  (Iocs,  and 
garnish  it  with  paddy-fields,  and  realise  the 
fierceness  and  lustre  of  its  sun,  and  the  savour 
of  its  soil,  before  \vc  can  fill  in  the  background 
to  Gikwjali.  There  were  five  Gaurs  in  India, 
according  to  one  author;  but  Bengal  alone  bears 
the  name  to-day,  and  when  we  cast  up  its  as- 
sociations, and  listen  to  the  songs  made  out 
of  atlection  for  it,  we  begin  to  understand  that 
there  is  something  special  belonging  to  it,  an 
idiosyncrasy,  noi  easy  for  a  Kuropean  to  fix — 
as  affecting  to  its  own  folk  as  a  Tyaeside  accent 
to  a  Northumbrian. 

\Vc  think  of  Rabindranath's  English  versions, 
his  "  prose- verse,"  a:;  so  familiar,  so  obvious  in 
its  rhythm,  that  we  hardly  care  to  realise  it 
in  the  original.  He  seems  in  his  English  to 
have  touched  the  natural  tongue  of  poetr>-  that 
brings   countncij   unu    nicn    tugethcr.      But    talk 

«9 


I 


20 


R.\BIXI)RAXATII  T.\(.URK 


cti. 


to  one  ')f  his  fi'll«>w  count r\ nun  about  it,  and 
you    iM'gin    to   |Hrcci\c    that    tluri"   arc   arccnts 
and  raflcnds,  Hghtn  and  shadrs,   that   we  mis^ 
inevitably     strains   t»f   the   Wu'shnava   son^'s,   or 
(tf  a  folk-son;^  that   was  h^ard   in  the  forest  of 
Vrin(hi    before    the    Knghsh    lan;;uage   began    to 
be.    And  as  for  the  language  in  v. !iich  the  \aish- 
nava   p«)ct8   wrote    their   songs     Uabindranalh's 
mother-tongue — no  one  but   a  native  can  hope 
to  gather  up  its  fon  e  and  variety  «»f  idiom.    Turn 
for  some  account   of   its   .struggles   I'or  survival 
(not  unlike  those  (;f  the  Welsh)  to  the  remark- 
able great   book,   over  a   thousand   pages  long, 
in    which    Dinesh    Chandra    Sen   has   traced    its 
record.     There  we  hear  how  jealous  the  Brah- 
mins were  of  its  use  as  a  written  tongue.    They 
wanted  the  truths  of  their  religion  "to  be  hxked 
up  in  the  Sanskrit  texts,"  and  they  were  afraid 
of  any  movement  that  could  give  status  to  the 
vernacular.      Probably   thc\-    thought,    he   adds, 
that  the  purity  of  their  doilrine  would  be  lost 
in  what   they  looked   i:p<.:i   as  a   mere  provin- 
cial dialect.     But   this  Iiinis  already  at   a  con- 
tempt for  Bengali  that  Listed  fcr  rcnfurics,  and 
has  helped  in  our  time  to  (luickcn  the  riiiicule often 


I'l^-:.- 


■I  J*' 


III 


soMi:  INDIAN  i'()i;r^ 


31 


As  thi'  jtfnius  of  a  Ch.uicur  j,mw-  to  F,n;!i,h 
ix)ctry  a  ru-w  <jiiali»y,  •  .  iUaI   of  a  Cliaiuli   D.u 
arrived  to  (|iii(k<n  llu-  p'Htrv  of  [J(  Il!^ll.     True, 
t  iC  two  [Mtft ,  aii'l  i!nir  «ii!ki(iit    v.ays  of  writ- 
ing strru  almosf   to  h.  loti;;   lo  (inf.  rml   planets. 
The  Indian  [loct,  like  the  iji^lish,  ..lius  of  lov< , 
and  he  ha>  liis  -l.uk  of  [(■•'.(•nduy  and  n.inanlic 
allusions,  hut  hi,    -.ti^r,  ;.f^.  :friiii;;  ,  n   ihc  dev- 
otee's saered    thread;    v.e    havi-    no   '•Prol,.gue" 
with    a    relif,;iou>i    i>il;Tinia;;«     ■    r\  i;^  ;    as    exiii'^c 
for   the    humour   of   I  hi    ru.-d.      Ilov.evtr   wfien 
we  tr>'  to   make  our  piitiuv  of  i;tn;;.i!,  we  (an 
learn  much  from  ("handi   Da-.     We  tannot    f-r- 
gi^t    how   in:  uutra;;ed   the   I}ra!uiiinH  hy   sa>in.!^ 
that   the  h  vily  washerwoman.   Rami   (!ur  call- 
-ng  does  not  sound,  alas:  (juite  the  >anie  in  ling- 
liah;,  was  as  holy   in  h's  eyes  as  thi  .sa(  red  lunm 
uf  Gayutri,  miiher  of  ;!ie  VVdas.     But  he  meant 
k    reulh      ideally,    and    without    tlujught   <jf   ex- 
tra vagai-icc. 

Oiaiidi  Da;    has  a  hxal  lie  I  hat  connoets  him 

■?-iL:.,    'i-a.biir,i;."-an:"th.    in   ear!>-    life   he  seltled  at 

-di         liagt      d    \auiiura,    t.  •      niiiL.-,    southeast 

I    B'Minii-       In    ^a  tern    \U  ,   ;al   a    i^ian    A   un- 

:  m-i  _uli}     is    s(jnijtiini  ■    r-/'.,!    ^.    "niad 

Tii.zi_,       jui    LUC   Liiiihtt   ii   one   that   lias  an 


22 


RABINDRANATH  TAGORE 


en. 


accent  of  tenderness.     It  does  not  imply  any 
shade  of  contempt      In  his  case  it  helps  to  con- 
vey the  idea  of  his  poetic  afflatus,  which  was 
such  as  to  satisfy  Plato's  claim  in  "Ion"  for 
Ihe   divine   madness   of   the   true   poet.     Love, 
in  its  most  abstract,   most  exalted  forms,  was 
the  burden  of  his  songs.    He  is  like  u,  Vaishnava 
writing   two    centuries    before    their   time.     He 
writes  the  Purva  Raga,  or  "Dawn  of  Love,"  of 
Love's  Messenger,  its  secret  pilgrimage,  of  lovers' 
meetings,    and    of    their    fmal    separation.      In 
his  "Dawn  of  Love"  Krishna  appears  as  a  spir- 
itual vision  to  Radha.    "She  has  caught  a  glimpse 
of  his   dark   blue   complexion."     It   has   acted 
on    her   like    some   strong   spell.      ''What   pain 
has  overtaken  her?"  the  poet  asks.     "She  loves 
solitude,  and  sits  alone,  and  will  listen  to  none." 
The  songs  of  Chandi  Das  call  up  the  region 
whence  they  sprang — tlie  varying  colours  of  its 
air,  the  different  lustre  of  its  sun,  the  particular 
savours  of  the  soil.     From  others  we  hear  of 
its  sky,  so  blue  in  early  spring,  fog-obscured  in 
v/intcr,    beclouded    and    thunder-threatened    in 
the  rainy  season.    To  the  Hindu,  living  so  much 
in  the  open  air  and  so  close  to  mother  earth, 
the  weather  matters  vitally,  just  as  it  dee.,  tc 


I^^SS«SSi^5|?^SW«&<K??g^^^ 


in 


SOME  INDIAN  POETS 


the  paddy-ficIds.  Nature  changes  very  markedly 
from  month  to  month.  So  the  Varamasi,  or 
description  of  the  twelve  months,  is  a  chosen 
theme  of  the  old  Indian  poets,  as  the  early  Shep- 
herd's Kdcnder  was  with  the  English. 

When  you  read  Gitanjali  or  The  Gardener 
you  feel  how  well  the  poet  has  loved  his  region. 
It  is  nature's  demesne,  and  with  him  as  with 
Chandi  Das  or  Nimai,  nature  is  very  near  super- 
nature.  For  the  two  zones  cross  in  India  as 
they  do  not  in  our  western  countries.  It  is 
much  easier  for  the  Hindu  to  pass  the  confines 
than  for  us  who  have  shut  out  the  supersensual 
and  tried  to  make  it  seem  absurd  in  the  face 
of  a  civilisation  whose  end  is  creature-comfort. 
The  feeling  of  the  Bengal  peasant  for  nature's 
moods  may  be  seen  in  the  folk-songs  about  her 
deities,  such  as  Siva,  who  express  her  terror 
and  beauty.  To  be  sure,  in  the  Indian  mythol- 
ogy, Siva  appears  to  lie  beyond  the  sphere  of 
pleasure  and  pain;  the  immovable  amid  the 
liux  of  things,  eternity  in  the  midst  of  time. 
But  the  countr>'-folk  of  Bengal  who  love,  like 
other  peasants,  to  see  things  in  the  concrete, 
have  not  hesitated  to  bring  him  down  into  the 
paddy-fields   and    to    their   own    village    doors. 


m 


i^smM-mmmMM^^ 


-->,; 


24 


RABINDRANATH  TAGORE 


CH. 


The  Puranas  may  paint   Siva  as  the  body  of 
death,  on  whic  li  dances  Kali  in  her  ecstasy,  but 
in   the  old   folk-songs  we  see   Siva  putting  off 
the  god  and  becoming  a  peasant,  a  beggar,  and 
a   hemp-smoker.      In    these   Siva   songs,   whose 
singers  have  usually  an  Ekatara,  or  one-stringed 
lute,  the  changes  and  rural  events  of  the  year 
occur  as   a   matter   of   course.     The   ccphaUca 
flower  falls  to  the  ground  in  showers  under  the 
clear  autumn  sky  of  Bengal;  the  breeze  seems 
to  blow  more  softly  in  the  season  to  which  they 
belong.     Siva  has  a  wife,   Uma,  but  he  is  no 
provident  mate;  he  is  old  and  rascally,  and  so 
poor  that  lie  is  unable  even  to  find  a  pair  of 
shell-bracelets  for  his  bride,   though  she  is  the 
daughter  of  a  king,   and   that   king  is   Mount 
Himavati.      Thus    the    sorrows    of    Siva's    girl- 
bride  arc  a  common  theme,  and  the  feelings  of 
Menaka   her   mother   become   in   the   songs   so 
affecting   that   the   eyes   of   many  a   child-wife 
glisten  behind  her  veil,  and  the  hearts  of  the 
mothers   cr>'   out   for   the   daughters  who  have 
been  taken  av,'ay  from  tliem  when  mere  children. 
Among  the  true  folK)\vci5  of  Siva   the  form 
of  Uma  represents  the  fineness  and  delicacy  of 
earthly  life,   and   that  of  Siva   the   terror  and 


& 


-1      :■=  r'J<,    .: 


^^i:«p 


".i»i 


m 


SOME  INDL\N  POETS 


25 


grimness  of  death.  Here,  as  in  the  real  world, 
youth  and  age,  life  and  death,  are  united,  and 
the  flower  that  blooms  and  the  flower  that  fades 
appear  on  the  same  bough.  In  this  embrace 
of  life  by  death  the  Hindu  devotee  does  not  see 
anything  to  strike  terror  to  his  heart.  He  takes 
it  as  an  expression  of  a  law  of  nature  and  views 
it  with  a  reverence  to  be  traced  in  these  songs. 
So  every  peasant,  we  arc  told,  while  hearing  or 
singing  songs  about  Siva  and  Uma,  knows  that 
Siva  is  above  every  earthly  object:  he  is  divine 
and  immaculate  and  above  all  desire. 

Through  the  legends  of  Siva  and  Kali,  and 
the  folk-songs  and  the  Vaishiia\'a  songs,  we  dis- 
cover the  marked  individuality  of  this  region,  in 
which  poets  sprang  up  like  birds  at  a  woodside. 
Song  is  a  custom  of  the  country.  Its  folk  need 
music  as  they  need  rice.  Even  the  snakes  are 
put  into  songs;  and  in  the  story  of  that  son  of 
India  who  came  cursed  into  the  world,  and  was 
incarnated  as  a  great  hunter,  we  have  a  lovely 
lyric  landscape,  with  cows  and  milkmaids,  lit 
by  the  morning  sun,  as  a  setting  for  the  scene 
where  he  finds  the  golden  lizard. 

There  is  one  poet,  IMukundarama,  who  de- 
scribes Bengal   with   a   certain   realism  and  as 


■||, 


m 


fff^ 


26 


RABLNDRANATH  TAGORE 


CH. 


he  saw  it.  The  late  Professor  Cowell  termed 
him  "the  Crabbc  of  Bengal,"  who  loved  his 
native  village  none  the  less  because  he  was  exiled 
from  it  under  the  Muhamcdan  tyranny.  "All 
honest  men,"  he  said,  "live  in  Damunya;  in 
its  southern  quarter  live  the  poets  and  the  good 
scholars.  The  great  divino  Siva  himself  in  his 
grace  has  been  to  Damunya."  As  for  its  river, 
Ratnanu,  its  water  is  dear  to  him  as  that  of 
the  Ganges  itself.  It  was  by  drinking  it,  he 
says,  that  he  became  endowed  with  poetrj-. 
The  true  ichor  of  Gauda  ran  indeed  in  his  veins. 
Wherever  he  may  place  his  scenes,  in  Siva's 
heaven,  or  India  or  Ceylon,  said  Professor  Cowell, 
"he  never  loses  sight  of  Bengal." 

Water  means  so  much  in  India;  every  Bengal 
poet  makes  much  of  his  native  stream  or  river. 
WTierever  and  whenever  Nimai  saw  a  ri\'er 
flowing  by  him  he  heard  in  it  the  rustling  and 
murmuring  of  the  Jumna  which  he  associated 
with  Krishna.  i\s  for  the  poems  on  Ganga 
Devi,  the  river-goddess,  the  spirit  of  the  Ganges, 
the}'  tell  us  how  precious  she  was  to  the  Gaur- 
born  Hindoo.  "When  dying,"  says  Chanda 
Sen,  "we  must  have  at  least  a  drop  of  Ganges 
water,  or  v-e   feel   disconsolate  at   the  hour  uf 


i-.tl. 


\  .-ij.'S^'^* 


m 


SOME  INDIAN  POETS 


27 


death."     Fancy  an  Englishman  languishing  for 
a  drop  of  Thames  water  on  his  death-bed! 

So  much  one  is  tempted  to  say  about  Rabin- 
dranath  Tagore's  native  region,  because  alike 
in  reading  his  poems  and  in  talking  to  him  about 
the  things  that  have  most  alTected  his  imag- 
ination, one  realises  that  he  owed  much  of  his 
endowment  to  his  early  years  and  surround- 
ings there.  When  he  pictures  the  beauty  of 
the  ♦,■ -th  it  is  with  a  sky  like  that  whose  blue 
radiance  filled  Radha  with  ecstasy  stretched 
over  its  trees  and  pools  and  cow  pastures.  When 
he  looks  back  for  those  associations  which  knit 
up  one's  feeling  about  life  and  its  pleasantness 
and  human  continuity,  it  is  with  the  music  of 
the  rasas  in  songs  like  those  of  Rama  Ra  Sada 
that  he  finds  them  conditioned.  And  as  for 
the  language  in  which  they  are  uttered,  we 
have  to  talk  with  one  whose  mother- tongue 
it  is  to  appreciate  its  full  resource,  and  those 
elements  and  qualities  in  it  which  have  made 
it  pliant  under  the  lyric  spell.  We  test  a  lan- 
guage by  its  elasticity,  its  response  to  rhythm, 
by  the  kindness  with  which  it  looks  upon  the 
figurative  desires  of  the  child  and  the  poet.  In 
these   esseniiais,   Bengali   proves   its   right   to  a 


l\ 


H 


Iff  - 


m 


TTW^^'TM^nK 


RABINDR/\NATH  TAGORE 


en. 


place  among  th<'  '•••generative  tongues  of  the 
world.  As  for  its  rhythmic  h"fc,  though  I  can- 
not quote  instances  in  the  original  of  its  force, 
there  are  man\-  songs  to  be  had  whose  power 
of  melody  triumphs  even  over  imperfect  trans- 
lation into  Englisii.  Take  that  one  song  of 
Govinda  Das  in  which  Radha  says,  "Let  my 
spirit  be  turned  into  a  summer  breeze  for  the 
fan  with  which  Krishna  cools  himself.  When- 
ever he  moves,  like  a  new-born  cloud,  may  I 
become  the  sky  behind  him,  to  form  the  pale 
background  of  his  heavenly  form." 

The  Bengali  idiom  needs  to  be  traced  in  every 
form  it  assumes— religious,  literary,  or  popular. 
Take  a  le.if  of  the  hook  of  the  sage,  Lomasa. 
One  day  the  son  of  the  god  Indra  came  to  him  and 
said  that  he  wanlcd  to  build  him  a  hut  to  shelter 
him.  "No  need  of  that,"  said  he,  "since  life 
is  so  short."  "How  long  then  will  you  live?" 
the  other  asked;  and  he  replied,  "The  fall  of 
every  one  of  my  hairs  will  take  the  whole  cycle 
of  an  Indra's  reign.  When  all  my  hair  is  fallen, 
my  death  will  surely  come."  The  figurative 
note  is  heard  again  in  a  song  of  Rasu's  which 
the  villagers  sing,  in  which  he  says,  "Let  your 
mind  be  the  bird  Chakora,  and  cry  for  a  drop 


m 


SOME  INDIAN  POETS 


29 


of  mercy  even  as  the  bird  cries  for  a  drop  of 
water  from  the  clouds."  Or  in  this,  on  the  even- 
ing of  death:  "When  death  will  come  and  pull 
me  by  the  hair,  they  will  get  ready  the  bamboo 
for  me,  and  send  me  out  of  the  house  with  a 
poor  earthen  pitcher,  stripped  like  a  Sanyasi 
of  my  clothes."  Or  this  from  a  Tappa  song  by 
a  poet  who  was  living  in  the  time  of  Bums  and 
wrote  love  songs  that  something  offer  his  pas- 
sionate sincerity:  "If  only  my  beloved  would 
love  me,  the  scentless  Kinsiika  flower  would 
grow  fragrant,  the  thorny  Ketaki  would  grow 
without  a  thorn,  the  Sandal  would  flower  and  the 
sugar  cane  bear  fruit." 

Two  more  instances:  the  first  is  from  Chandi 
Das,  a  lover's  consolation:  "To  be  a  true  lover, 
one  must  be  able  to  make  a  frog  dance  in  the 
mouth  of  a  snake."  The  other  is  from  one  of 
the  tales  told  by  a  country  tale-teller  or  Kathaka, 
a  description  of  an  Indian  noonday  so  hot  that 
"the  buffalo  and  the  bear  dipping  themselves 
in  a  pool  doze  in  the  very  act  and  half  close 
their  eyes." 

A  fostering  country,  a  song-loving  people, 
inspiring  forerunners  and  a  susceptible  mother- 
tongue— these    arc    needed    to   beget    the    true 


it' 


^Bmk:f^^s^smi^::  pp^hS' 


30 


RABINDRANATH  TAGORE 


CH.  in 


poet;  and  enough  has  been  said  now  of  the  land 
of  Gaur  or  Bengal  lo  show  how  propitious  were 
its  sun,  its  soil,  and  its  air  to  the  genius  of  Rabin- 
dranath  Tagore.  It  enabled  him  to  have  faith 
alike  in  the  spirit  of  ix)etr>',  in  the  sympathy 
of  his  hearers,  and  in  himself  whose  fibres  were 
so  strung,  in  accord  with  its  traditional  ragas, 
that  ti.  \-  answered  instinctively  to  its  lightest 
call. 

One  other  poet  might  have  been  added  to 
the  roll  of  his  forerunners,  in  some  ways  the 
most  nearly  related  to  him  of  them  all.  This 
is  Nimai  or  Chaitanya  Deva;  but  it  is  in  regard 
to  a  special  book,  Gitanjali,  that  we  can  best 
range  his  influence  and  mysterious  powers,  which 
after  many  centuries  are  still  alive  in  India;  and 
the  account  of  his  career  may  be  left  to  that 
chapter. 


-  -  o^pi^f  -(^  iim-  rir-  'li--  " "  "imw  '  '  n-  i  "^ "  " 


CHAPTER  IV 


THE  GARDENER 


1 1  if 


O  rosT,  what  art  thou  to  be  compared  with  her  bright  face? 
She  is  fresh,  and  thou  art  rough  with  thorns.— Hafiz. 

Those  of  us  who  made  our  first  acquaintance 
with  Rabindranath  through  Gitafijali  may,  on 
turning  to  the  pages  of  The  Gardener,  be  de- 
ceived by  an  apparent  likeness  of  rhythm  and 
colour  into  thinking  the  poems  of  the  same 
stock.  But  in  reality  they  belong  to  another 
phase;  they  are  the  songs  of  his  earlier  man- 
hood, drawn  largely  from  three  volumes,  entitled 
Sonar  Tari,  Manasi,  and  Chitra.  We  lose  much, 
it  is  said,  of  the  charm  of  their  original  meas- 
ures, because  the  English  medium  gives  them 
a  demurer,  more  serious  air  than  that  intrinsi- 
cally belonging  to  them. 

A  fellow-countrywoman  of  their  writer,  her- 
self a  poet,  said  that  to  understand  his  hold 
over  his  Bengali  readers,  especially  the  younger 
generation,  it  was  indispensable  to  read  the 
songs  of  his  youth  in  the  original.    Others  ha^•e 

31 


■  li 


^^i 


^wiyzmsmsfcm^ssstEs!^mfi^\ 


*  ■•A''E7'-"i.' 


3* 


RABINDRANATH  TAGORE 


ai. 


tpokcn  of  the  infectious  mclo<iy,  whose  notes 
suggest  the  very  spirit  of  the  Indian  flute.  In 
the  use  of  the  refrain  and  other  devices,  the 
songs  of  The  Gardener  betray  an  exuberant  de- 
light in  lyric  art;  they  depend  on  music,  and  the 
music  tempts  him  to  a  more  rapid  flight  in  his 
invocations  and  love  passiigcs. 

In  the  fifth  song  the  llute  itself  brings  the 
verse  to  its  climax  and  gives  the  refrain: 


I  am  restless,  I  am  athirst  for  far-away  thiriRS, 
My  soul  goes  out  in  a  longing  to  touch  the  skirts  of  the 
dim  distance. 

0  Great  Beyond.  O  the  keen  call  of  thy  flute! 

1  forget,  I  ever  forget,  that  1  have  no  wings  to  fly,  that  I  am 
bound  in  this  spot  evermore. 

I  am  engcr  and  wakeful,  I  am  a  stranger  in  a  strange  land. 
Thy  breath  comes  to  me  whispering  an  impossible  hope. 
Thy  tongue  is  known  to  my  heart  as  its  \cry  own. 

0  Far-to-seek,  O  the  kt-n  call  oi  thy  flute! 

1  forget,  I  ever  forget,  that  1  know  not  the  way,  that  I  have 
not  the  winged  horse. 

From  this  song  and  refrain  we  can  imagine 
with  what  swaying  movement  and  lightness  of 
step  the  music  leads  the  original  Indian  words 
to  their  melody.     In  these  versions  the  pattern 

on     t"*^    r\Q  rr«    i\ft(in     |/->»-.l.-r.     A.  .('.•^'.4- ^     il.  -  «         t 

I. SI  ».,.   i-'«fc,v  -tvCii  iOwxi3  u-.,iiiiiic  lij  uiul  OI  any 


■  ^  iVnV^  .TiMVl'SWi  ^'VC^  rii 


x^ 


i 


i 


I 


^ 


11 


a-* 


1 


■*^ 


1      ^ 


^ 


I 


hi  um 


Ji 


"^     *>     W 


rrli 


-l»       '*♦ 


»   il 


J! 


if. 


t-'|-jr9i'» 


'«.<  "^  t;  -i 


lLJ. 


'mrvi!mB^.m^7^i^^- 


IV 


•THE  CAKJJtNER  ' 


S 


nrlinan-  Knglish  lyric,  bft  fh  •  nrtual  tune 
maki  >  light  «tf  fhi-  lifus  an-i  rhyitu'  p.iu'scs  which 
an  t!^K'li^h  mus'  ian  would  cm|)hr'  isc  in  setting 
h>s  S')nK.  The  Indian  minstrel  culuir'cs  one 
line  or  phrase,  stjftens  another  hy  a  firj  dimin- 
ucndt),  and  I'.ien  by  un  atrial  turn  of  the  \  .cal 
nu'lixly  gives  a  delightful  waywardness  to  the 
next  stave. 

The  intluence  ujwn  Rabindran-'th's  verse  of 
the  old  Vaishnava  pocts  has  already  I>een  no- 
ticed. One  of  his  (ndian  biographers  tvUs  us 
that  two  mastcr-Influonccs  heliKvl  to  fUxide 
the  bent  of  his  mind:  the  one  he  owed  to  his 
father,  the  other  to  the  \' lishnava  ixx-try.  It  was 
the  spirit  as  well  as  the  letter  and  congenial 
forms  of  that  poetr\-  that  heljK'd  to  mould  his 
poetic  character,  in  essence  a  j-octrj'  of  revclt, 
it  was  in  sympathy  v.ilh  all  that  w.,s  best  in 
the  folk-life  of  the  country  invoking  a  religion 
that  tended  to  break  down  the  academic  tradi- 
tion in  literature  and  helped  to  break  in  actual 
life  the  law  of  caste.  "The  Vaishnavas,"  says 
Dinesh  Cl.andra,  "infused  new  life  into  the 
literature  and  the  spirit  of  the  age,  just  when 
the  vitality  of  the  Hindoo  race  was  threatening 
to  sink." 


:t    11 


34 


RABLNDKANATH  TAGORE 


(U. 


i" 


n 


Wlicn  Rabindranath  was  a  boy  he  went  with 
his  father  on  a  long  pilgrimage  along  the  groat 
rivers  and  over  the  plains  of  Bengal  and  up 
to  the  foot  of  the  Himalayas.  During  these 
wanderings  the  spirit  of  nature  conspired  with 
the  art  of  the  Vaishnava  singers  to  teach  him 
a  lyric  philosophy  of  life,  none  the  less  real  be- 
cause in  youth  it  was  a  half-unconscious  influence. 
Its  first  and  its  wildest  expression  was  in  the 
early  books  already  described,  which  have  not 
been  turned  into  English. 

The  sounds  of  wind  and  water,  and  the  rhythms 
of  nature,  are  used  in  The  Gardener  at  every  turn 
to  enhance  the  song  of  the  lover  and  the  romance 
of  his  desire: 


ip 


Does  the  earth  like  a  harp  shiver  into  song  with  the  touch 
of  my  feet? 

Is  it  true  that  the  dewdrops  fall  from  the  eyes  of  night  \.  hen 
I  am  seen,  and  that  the  light  of  the  morning  is  glad  when  it 
wraps  my  body  round? 

In  the  second  song  we  have  the  key  to  the 
book.  There  the  poet,  as  if  realising  that  the 
world  might  look  upon  him  as  too  remote  from 
the  passions  of  men  and  women,  dramatises  the 
question  and  answer: 


HI 


iwgicc 


i«rf;  »» 


IV 


"THE  GARDENER" 


35 


"  Ah,  poet,  the  evening  draws  near;  your  hair  is  turning  grey. 
"Do  you  in  your  lonely  musing  hear  the  message  of  thi- 
hereafter?" 

"It  is  evening,"  the  poet  said,  "and  I  am  listening  because 
some  one  may  call  from  the  village,  late  though  it  be. 

"I  watclj  if  young  straying  hearts  meet  toj^cther.  and  two 
pairs  of  eager  eyes  beg  for  music  to  break  their  silence  and 
siK-ak  for  them. 

"Who  is  there  to  weave  their  passionate  songs,  if  I  sit  on 
the  shore  of  life  and  contemplate  death  and  the  beyond?" 

There,  as  it  were,  the  poet  of  the  earth  and  the 
joy  vi  earth  replies  to  the  Indian  ascetic. 

As  to  those  readers  win  arc  not  prepared 
to  go  back  'rom  the  poet  of  GilanjaU  to  the 
writer  of  love-songs  and  the  singer  enamoured 
of  the  keen  sensations  of  the  earth,  he  would 
tell  them  as  he  did  one  dissatisfied  soul,  'Tor- 
give  me,  if  I  too  have  been  young!" 

But  in  truth  the  more  one  looks  into  his  poetr>' 
the  more  clearly  one  sees  that  the  two  poets  of 
1879  and  of  1909  are  one  and  the  same  at  heart. 
The  songs  of  divine  love,  set  to  Indian  melody 
in  the  later  book,  are  matched  by  the  lyric  in- 
terpretation of  human  love  in  the  pages  of  The 
Gardener.  Love's  prodigal,  in  this  romantic 
interlude,  only  spends  himself  that  he  may 
break  out  of  the  circle  of  the  lower  sensation 


fci, 


tr' 


.'H 


f 


•BS-.^'-Wf^' 


36 


RABINDRANATH  TAGORE 


CH. 


to  attain  the  elusive  clue  to  the  world  that  is 
beyond  the  world : 

I  know  not  what  wine  of  the  wild  poppy  I  have  drunk,  that 
there  is  this  madness  in  my  eyes.  There  arc  eyes  that  smile 
and  eyes  that  weep,  and  there  is  madness  in  my  eyes. 

The  memory  that  comes  to  such  a  prodigal 
is  overwhelming;  it  seems  that  the  emotion  of 
the  ages  is  behind  him : 

Do  the  memories  of  banished  months  of  May  linger  in  my 
limbs?  .  .  . 

Is  it  true  that  your  love  travelled  through  all  the  ages  of  the 
world  in  search  of  me? 

In  the  measure  of  that  past  and  its  human 
accumulations  lurks  the  sign  of  the  desire  of 
what  is  to  come: 

Is  it  then  true  that  the  mystery  of  the  Infinite  is  written  on 
this  little  forehead  of  mine? 

It  is  the  true  follower  of  Nimii,  the  worshipper 
of  the  heaven  that  descends  to  earth,  who  writes 
these  songs;  who  in  them  i)roclaims  that  the 
road  to  the  supernal  beauty  leads  through  the 
commonest  of  love's  exi)cricnccs: 

No,  my  friends,  I  shall  never  be  an  ascetic,  whatever  you 
may  say.  .  ,  .  If  I  cannot  find  a  shady  shelter  and  a  companion 
for  my  penance,  I  shall  never  turn  ascetic. 


IV 


"THE  GARDENER" 


37 


The  Welsh  poet,  Dafydd  ap  Gwilym,  when 
the  Grey  Brother  turned  upon  him  and  showed 
him  the  perils  that  lay  in  love  of  woman,  knew 
very  well  what  to  reply.  He  said  in  so  many 
words  that  he  had  found  his  poet's  paradise 
with  one  perfect  daughter  of  summer  in  a  birch 
grove:  **Come  with  me  to  the  birch-tree  church, 
to  share  in  the  piety  of  the  cuckoo  amid  the 
leaves,  where  we,  with  none  to  intrude  on  us, 
shall  attain  heaven  in  the  green  grove." 

The  Indian  poet  replies  to  the  monk,  and 
says  that  the  spring  winds,  driving  the  dust 
and  the  dead  leaves  away,  are  blowing  away 
with  them  his  monitions: 

For  we  have  made  truce  viiih  Death  for  once,  and  only  for 
a  few  fragrant  Lours  we  two  have  been  made  immortal. 

We  should  remember  that  in  the  Indian  tradi- 
tion the  lyric  symbolism  of  such  poems  is  easily 
translated  from  what  we  may  call  the  dialect  of 
earth  into  the  language  of  heaven.  Dinesh 
Chandra  Sen  tells  us  how  an  old  man  mverted  a 
love-song  of  Chandi  Das: 

"In  i8q4,"  he  says,  "I  was  residing  in  Tapira.  It 
was  early  in  June.  The  clouds  had  gathered  on  the 
horizon,  and  tiey  made  the  darkness  of  night  a  shade 


li 


13 


38 


RABINDRANATH  TAGORE 


en. 


more  black.  An  illiterate  Vaishnava  devotee  was  play- 
inp  on  a  lute  made  of  a  long  gourd  and  singing  to  it, 
'Dark  is  the  night  and  thick  are  the  clouds,  how  could 
you,  my  love,  come  by  the  path  on  such  a  night?  There 
is  the  garden.  I  sec  him  in  the  rain,  and  my  heart  breaks 
at  the  sight.'  The  poet  ends  by  saying  that  'the  story 
of  this  love  will  gladciCii  the  world';  but,  as  the  old  man 
sang,  his  voice  was  fairly  choked  with  tears.  When 
asked  why  he  we[)t,  he  said  it  was  because  of  the  scng. 
Thereupon  he  was  told  that  it  was  only  an  ordinary 
love-song,  with  nothing  in  it  to  cause  such  feeling.  But 
he  did  not  so  consider  it.  He  replied,  'I  am  full  of  sin. 
My  soul  is  covered  with  darkr.oss.  In  my  deep  distress 
I  beckoned  the  ine  ciful  God  to  come  to  mo,  and  he 
came,  and  I  found  him  waiting  at  the  gate  of  my  house.' 
The  thought  of  his  mercy  choked  my  voice,  'Dark  is 
the  night,  and  thick  are  the  clouds,  how  could  you,  my 
love,  come  by  the  path  on  such  a  night?'" 

Tears  still  dropped  from  the  eyes  of  the  old 
man  as  his  fingers  played  on  the  lute,  and  he 
hummed  mournfully,  "Dark  is  the  night  and 
thick  are  the  clouds." 

To  those  who  read  Rabindranath's  poems  in 
llie  original,  the  break,  such  as  it  is,  between 
the  moods  of  Gitanjali  and  TJic  d'.yikncr  hardly 
exists  in  the  same  degree.  In  i!k5c  books  the 
reader  has  the  essence  of  a  much  brgci-  body  of 
verse,  representing  everj^  mood  and  every  stage 
of   the  poet's  history;  and   in   their  pages   the 


IV 


"THE  GiVRDENER 


39 


spirit  of  his  youth  and  the  desires  and  irresistible 
impulses  of  youth  are  merged  naturally  in  the 
poetry  of  his  mature  exiK-ricnce.  The  copy 
of  his  collected  poems— a  curious,  attractive- 
looking  large  quarto,  bound  in  plain  crimson 
boards  without  adornment,  printed  with  the 
cursive  Bengali  tyi)e  in  double  columns,  and 
published  at  Calcutta— serves  as  a  very  tantalis- 
ing reminder  of  the  amount  of  his  verse  that  is 
still  untranslated.  It  must  contain  in  all  about 
ten  times  as  much  matter  as  we  have  in  the 
present  English  books,  of  which  The  Gardener 
is  first  in  order  of  time. 

The  middle  pages  of  The  Gardener  contain 
a  cycle  of  love-songs,  twenty  or  thirty  in  all, 
among  which  are  several  that  answer  perfectly, 
we  are  told,  to  the  Vaishnava  musical  iy\^c. 
To  know  their  spell,  we  should  be  able  to  hear 
them  sung  to  their  Indian  accompaniment  and 
fully  reinforced  v.ith  the  emotional  life  of  the 
ragas  or  tunes  to  which  they  were  set.  In  some 
of  the  old  English  songs  which  express  a  pas- 
sionate love-motive  we  find,  when  we  turn  to 
the  music,  that  the  words  are  wedded  to  a  minor 
strain,  in  which  to  our  modern  ears  there  is 
a  note  of  rciiiiiiloccnt  melancholy,  but  appar- 


% 


40 


RABINDRANATH  TAGORE  ch 


ently  no  strain  of  passion.     So  it  is  with  the 
music  of  these  songs:  there  is  a  sighing  cadence 
in  some  of  the  most  passionate  stanzas,  as  if  the 
music  turned  to  the  wind  and  the  streams  to 
find  an  accompaniment  for  the  rhythm  of  the 
words,  bom  of  the  desire  of  young  lovers.    Take 
the  twenty-ninth  song  in  this  cycle.     It  uses  a 
motive  which  has  been  used  agam  and  again  in 
the  love-songs  of  other  countries— in  the  aubades 
of   Provence,    the   folk-songs   of   Tuscany,    the 
Elizabethan  lyrics  and  the  songs  of  the  English 
lutanists.    There  is  no  note  in  it  which  has  not 
been  used  before,  but  in  its  very  simplicity  it 
is  affecting,  for  it  runs  to  love's  perennial  melody. 
One  has  only  to  add  to  its  words  the  minor  stram 
of  the  Bengali  tune,  rising  and  faUing  and  taking 
breath  at   the  pause  before  the  final  cadence, 
in  order  to  fulfil  the  measure  of  a  song,  seem- 
mgly  artless,  but  wildly  complete.    Out  of  such 
artlessness  it  is  that  the  lyric  art  is  bom. 

One  is  driven  to  insist  on  the  part  that  music 
takes  in  the  composition  of  these  songs,  be- 
cause, unless  their  author  is  realised  as  a  mu- 
sician, one  loses  touch  with  the  real  spring  of 
his  verse.  Indian  music,  however,  is  more  naive 
in   its   companionship   with   poetry    tlian   ours. 


"THE  GARDENER" 


41 


IV 

In  his  book  of  memoirs  Rabindranath  speaks  of 
a  paper  on  music  which  he  read  on  the  eve  of  his 
departure  for  England  (he  was  then  only  seven- 
teen years  old),  and  his  comments  on  it  are  U- 
luminating: 

«<I  tried  to  explain,"  he  says,  "that  the  real  purpose 
of  vocal  music  was  by  means  of  the  tune  to  interpret 
and  explain  the  words.  ...    The  written  part  of  my 
paper  was  small;  and  almost  from  bcginnmg  to  end 
I  tried  to  maintain  the  agreement  by  singinR  the  tunes 
that  express  diflerent  feelings.    Well  was  I  repaid  when 
the   chairman,   old    Reverend    Krishna    Mohan    Band- 
hopadhyaya,   said   to  me   'Hail,  Valmiki   nightingale! 
This  was,  I  think,  because  I  was  still  very  young,  and 
his  heart  was  melted  by  hearing  all  those  songs  sung  in 
a  childish  treble.    But  the  ideas  I  then  expressed  with 
so  much  pride  I  should  now  recognise  to  be  false." 

He  goes  on  to  speak  of  his  first  impressions 
of  our  music  and  of  the  singers  he  heard  during 
that  first  visit  to  Europe: 

In  our  country  the  first  thought  is  of  devotion  to 
the  song;  in  Europe  the  first  object  is  the  voice,  and 
with  the  voice  they  perform  miracles. 

But  the  singing  left  him  quite  untouched: 

Later,  I  managed  to  acquire  some  taste  for  European 
music  but  I  still  feel  the  ditference.  European  music 
is,  so'to  speak,  mixed  with  the  actuaUties  of  life;  .  .  . 


lift 


iv 


v\ 


i 

ill 


ik»^ 


v    '4iiSkr:difii^  ■ 


■'S!91t  — VL.-llaSdl 


^rd-:?i&^?^^w^f: 


42 


R.\BINDRANATH  TAGORE 


rn. 


Vl^ 


our  music  moves  afKivc  the  incuicnt  of  daily  life,  and 
because  of  that  it  is  marked  by  apparent  detachment 
auu  real  tenderness. 

Our  songs  s|Hak  of  the  early  dawn  and  the  starry 
midnight  sky  of  India;  our  music  breathes  of  dripping 
rain,  and  the  wordless  ecstasy  of  the  new  spring  as  it 
reaches  the  utmost  depth  of  the  forests.  .  .  . 

The  art  of  music  has  its  own  nature  and  special  func- 
tion. .  .  .  Song  begins  where  words  end ;  the  ine.xpressible 
is  the  domain  of  music. 

In  Hindustani  music  the  words  are  usually 
in.significant,  but  in  Bengal  the  influence  of 
words  has  been  too  strong  for  the  indcix^ndence 
of  pure  music.    He  continues: 

I  have  felt  this  again  and  again  when  composing  songs. 
When  I  began  to  write  a  line,  humming — 

Do  not  hide  in  your  heart,  O  Sakhi,  your  secret  words, 

then  I  saw  that  wherever  the  tune  flew  away  with  the 
words,  the  words  could  not  ii>ll<>w  on  foot.  Then  it 
seemed  to  mc  as  if  the  hidden  word  that  I  j)r;iytd  to  hear 
was  lost  in  the  gloom  of  the  forest,  it  melted  into  the 
still  whiteness  of  the  full  moonlight,  it  was  vc'Ied  in  the 
blue  distance  of  th  horizon — as  Jf  it  wert-  llic  innermost 
socrct  \.ord  of  tlio  whole  land  and  s<a  ami  .-!;y. 

I  heard  when  I  wai  vcr)'  youns  the  song,  "Wlio  dressed 
you  like  a  fo^e^gne.^' "  and  that  one  line  of  the  song  painted 
such  a  stranr^e  picture  in  my  mind  that  ...  I  once  tried 
to  compose  d  song  rnyscu'  under  the  spcii  of  liial  line. 


IV 


THE  G;\RDENER" 


43 


As  I  hummed  the  tunr  T  wrf>tc  the  fir^t  line  of  the  wtnR— 
"I  know  thie,  thou  Straii«<T"~an<l  if  then  i-rc  no  tun*" 
to  it  I  <'"a't  know  what  mcaniiiK  would  bi  Ifft  in  thf 
song.  But  !)>■  the  |)0\vlt  ot  the  >\n'\\  (Mantra)  of  the 
tune  the  mystirious  fipuro  of  tint  stranRir  was  evoked 
in  my  nund.  My  heart  l)e«an  to  say,  "There  is  a  vtranger 
j,'oing  to  and  fro  in  thi^  w.irM  of  ours— her  house  is  «)n 
the  further  shores  of  an  ocean  of  mystery— Sometimes 
she  is  to  be  seen  in  the  Autumn  morning,  sometimes 
in  the  flowery  midnight— Sometimes  we  receive  an  in- 
timation of  her  in  the  depths  of  our  heart— Sometimes 
I  hear  her  voice  when  I  turn  my  ear  to  the  sky."  The 
tune  of  my  song  led  me  to  the  very  d(K)r  of  that  stranger 
who  ensnare.s  the  universe  and  ai)i)ears  in  it,  and  I  said: 

WanderinR  over  the  world, 

I  come  tu  thy  land: 

I  am  a  guest  at  thy  door,  thou  Stranger. 

Some  days  afterwards  I  heard  some  one  singing  along 
the  road: 

How  docs  that  unknown  bird  fly  to  and  from  the  cage? 
Could  I  but  catch  it,  I  would  put  the  chain  of  my  thoughts 
round  its  feet. 

I  saw  that  the  Baul  song  said  the  same  thing.  At  times 
the  strange  bird  comes  to  the  closed  cage,  and  speaks 
a  word  of  the  limitless  and  the  unknown.  What  but  the 
tune  of  a  song  could  express  the  coming  and  going  of 
the  strange  bird? 

These  passages   from   the   confession-book  of 
the   lyrist   arc   ver>'   sitggestive,    when  one  can 


If' 


44 


RABINDRANATH  TAGOKK 


CH. 


I  r^. 


Still  recall  the  haunting  tunes  to  which  he  used 
oicasionally  to  sin^'  his  songs  when  he  was  in 
this  country.  In  lisicniir^  to  them,  one  was 
impressed  by  the  evident  iK)wer  of  their  sfxill 
over  the  singer.  They  induced  the  mtxxl,  the 
atmosphere,  the  rhythmical  lite,  which  the  song 
seemed  to  require. 

If  then  we  test  these  songs  of  The  Gardener 
by  the  tests  of  the  music  and  the  imagination 
that  have  gone  to  their  making,  we  find  they 
maintain  that  sensation  of  things  realised  musi- 
cally and  that  emotion  tied  to  congenial  rhythms 
and  concrete  forms,  by  which  the  lyric  art  is 
justified.  In  one  iv^ht-song  the  anklets  of  the 
maiden  who  is  supjwsed  to  be  singing  "grow 
loud  at  every  step"  as  she  passes  between  thj 
silent  houses  in  the  street;  and  she  grows  ashamed. 
In  the  suspense,  as  she  listens  for  her  lover's 
feet,  even  the  kaves  no  longer  rustle  on  the 
tree,  and  the  water  grows  still  in  the  river,  "like 
the  sword  on  the  knees  of  a  sentry  fallen  asleep." 
And  then  when  her  lover  joins  her  and  she 
trembles  and  her  eyelids  droop,  the  night 
grows  darker,  "the  wind  blows  out  the  lamp, 
and  the  clouds  draw  veils  over  the  stars." 
Then— last,  most    efTerlive    note    in    the    secret 


t '. 


IV 


THE  ClAF  DENER" 


45 


rhyino  t)f  her  hoiK's  and  fears,  irui  her  wonder  at 

hirsilf; 

ll  is  ihf  jtwel  at  my  own  brva»t  thai  shine*  ami  give*  light. 
I  do  not  kiu)w  how  lo  hitlc  it. 

Is  that  nt)t  tinely  conceived  in  the  maiden 
f^race  and  symj-ithy  >  "  the  iM)et's  understanding? 
Add  only  to  it  the  si^U  of  tlie  Indian  raf^a,  and 
the  wailing  and  elvish  music  m  which  the  night 
wind  and  lite  darkness  are  suggested,  and  the 
lyric  picture  is  Ljmplete. 

The  forms  and  the  sounds  of  nature  r\rc  al 
ways  waiting  in  ihese  songs,  ready  to  quicken 
the  love-ii  lerest.  In  the  eleventh  son^  occurs 
a  cloud-motive:  fl«)cks  of  cranes  fly  up  from 
the  river-bank,  and  gusts  of  wind  rush  over  the 
heath,  and  the  cattle  run  to  their  stalls.  In 
vain  the  maiden  lights  her  lamp  to  do  her  hnir 
and  arrange  her  wreath;  the  wind  blows  it  out. 
WTio  can  know  now  that  her  e>clids  have  not 
been  touched  by  lamp-black?  "Your  eyes  are 
darker  than  rain-clouds,"  sings  the  lover;  "Come 
as  you  are.  .  .  .  WTio  cares  if  your  wreath  is 
woven  or  not,  or  if  your  flowcr-chuin  is  linked?" 
and  again  the  cloud-motive  is  repcdlcd:  '*Th*> 
sky  is  overcast.    Come  as  you  are." 

In  the  next  page,  the  son.;  <.f  the  lake    the 


w 


til 


'in 


ftK 


ii 


I ' 


46 


RABINDRANATII  TA(;ORK 


CW    IV 


natural    imager>'    again    accentuates    the    love- 
thcnu' : 

The  fih;i<lc)w  of  the  roming  rain  in  on  the  laml*.  am!  the 
clou<l»  hiiiiK  U)w  u|x>n  the  blue  lines  of  the  trcet  like  the  heavy 
hair  alK)vc  your  eyebrows. 

I  inally,  we  may  say  alK)ut  The  Gardener 
that,  although  there  have  l)cen  other  Indian 
IH)Cts  who  have  sung  of  love  and  mortal  life, 
and  others  who  have  made  hymns  of  divine 
adoration,  none  until  he  came  was  able  to  iii- 
ter|)rct  in  both  kinds  the  spirit  of  the  east  to  the 
IK'ople  of  the  west.  That  is,  in  remembering 
India,  he  has  not  forgotten  that  his  stings  and 
their  themes  must  be  subject  to  the  whole  realm 
of  art;  and  he  has  made  their  accent  universal. 


"^l"^'^ 


^W 


tbv^;J^-'^L:^.:::'i^'^'*i^. 


CHAFTFR  V 


RADINDRANATII   TAGORF.'s  SHORT  STORIKS 


During  the  whol«'  night  lim«. 
»oiig»  went  on  in  the  liousc.  - 
Tagvre. 

There  arc  critics  .  *>  > 
writings  intimately  i  ' 
say  that  his  fines* 
or  in  his  plays,  bui 
a  few  of  ihem  have 


I'll    , 


>i<'Ii 


•,ak"   talcs  am!  Kin  ana 
■     .    'ly  of  D^^rthlrunath 

,r  V    p  .'  '•     analh's 

.        -n  and 

Ti'      in      is  songs 

>ii       ''nhs.     Only 

;)i.  ii  1  n  F'nglish; 
but  some  were  translat.  .  t,  ,im.  n tally  while 
their  author  was  in  London,  and  others  may 
be  hr.d  in  versions  jirintcd  from  time  to  time 
by  Mr.  R.  R.  Sen  and  earlier  translators.  And 
though,  judging  by  these  alone,  we  might  hesi- 
tate to  accept  the  verdict  of  his  Indian  friends, 
as  we  read  them  we  feel  ai  oi..  c  the  touch  of  the 
bom  ta'e-tcUer,  and  remember  then,  perhaps, 
how  inevitable  is  the  tale-teller's  figure  in  any 
sy-mbolic  cartoon  of  the  east.  But  in  this  -asc 
we  find  that  it  is  not  the  traditional  ta'?-teiler, 
reappearing  with  a  modern  dilerencc,  who  otTers 
us  hie.  wares.     For  while  the  tradition  has  un- 

47 


t    ,'1 


m 


48 


RABINDRANATH  TAGORE 


CH. 


doubtedly  helped  him  in  his  interpretation  of 
Bengal  life,  there  is  a  rarer  savour  in  it  altogether, 
a  savour  peculiar  to  the  writer  himself. 

In  Bengal  the  Kathakas  and  the  ballad-singers 
still  ply  their  calling  as  they  used  to  do,  and 
the  story  of  Sita  and  her  exiled  lord  is  still  being 
told  and  retold;  but  it  is  in  realising  the  old 
mode  that  we  begin  to  discover  where  the  art 
of  this  new  diviner  of  India  and  the  woman's 
heart  begins.  Sita,  it  may  be  explained,  is  al- 
most the  t>'pc-figurc  of  the  Hindu  wife;  but 
she  is  also  a  folk-tale  princess  "whose  tender 
feet  covered  with  alia  are  wounded  by  thorns," 
whose  eyes  shed  bitter  tears.  It  needed  a  tale- 
teller who  had  listened  in  boyh(X)d  to  such  tales 
as  hers  told  by  the  Kathakas,  and  who  had 
then  wandered  from  cast  to  west  and  learnt 
the  power  and  subtlety  of  the  greatest  historians 
of  the  heart,  to  become  equal  to  the  interpreta- 
tion which  he  set  himself  to  give  to  his  own 
region.  Sita  in  fact  is  merely  a  single  clue; 
we  must  look  further  for  the  disentangling  of 
the  threads,  now  and  old,  intricately  crosscJ  in 
Rabindrana til's  Indian  wch. 

In  the  art  of  the  tales  told  by  the  Bengali 
village    tale-tellers    memory    and    improvisation 


It' 


Rabindranath  Taoore. 
From  a  phutugniph  by  John  Trevor. 


■Jt*^ 


I 


Iv 


i  i^ 


1 1: 


l4*t 


SHORT  STORIES 


49 


hold  a  large  share;  and  as  compared  with  western 
fiction  there  is  very  much  the  same  difference 
that  \:e  fmd  in  the  treatment  of  the  songs  of 
east  and  west.    But  as  Rabindranath  has  proved 
himself  in  other  ways  a  close  student  of  foreign 
literatures,  so  here  he  has  known  how  to  develop 
for  his  own  use  a  sympathetic  and  thoroughly 
congenial  form  of  short  story.     In  it  he  com- 
bines, not  hard  and  fast  realism,  but  the  human 
realities  with  his  romance,  and  truth  to  nature 
attends  his  wildest  apparent  improvisations.    He 
is  able  thus  to  gain  effects  which  a  Nathaniel 
Hawthorne    or    a    Turgcnief    might    envy    him. 
Dr.    Seal,   perhaps    the   best-eciuippcd   critic    he 
has  had,  has  pointed  out  that  his  stories  resemble 
most  closely  (if  they  are  to  be  held  like  anything 
in    Euroixian    literature)    the    shorter    tales    of 
Flaubert.     The  fmer  art  of  the   tale  began   in 
Bengal  with   the  "Vaishnavas,"   who  gave  the 
Indian   tale,   or  Kat/ia,   a   more   finished   form; 
from  them  Rabindrr.nath  took  it  over,  and  made 
of  it  a  pliable  or  adaptable  instrument. 

Those  tales  of  his  which  have  api^eared  in 
the  pages  of  the  Wednesday  Reviciv,  the  Ilindo- 
stan  Rcvinv,  and  other  Indian  periodicals  form 
only  a  small  contingent  oi  the  number  he  has 


so 


RABINDRANATH  TAGORi: 


CII. 


told;  but  they  are  enough  to  show  how  fine  a 
medium  he  attained.  The  scenes  of  Indian 
country  life  which  they  contain — sketched  by 
him  when  he  was  acting  as  steward  of  the  family 
estates  on  the  Ganges — grow  as  intimate  and 
real  in  his  telling  as  those  familiar  in  our  every- 
day English  fiction. 

It  is  remarkable  too  how  often  the  story  is 
directed  to  showing  the  devotion  and  the  hero- 
ism of  the  Hindu  wife  or  woman.  In  one  which 
he  calls  "The  (ihat"  he  makes  the  river-stair 
itself  turn  narrator;  and  its  reminiscences  cul- 
minate in  the  fate  of  the  girl  Kusum.  The  open- 
ing discovers  the  instinctive  sense  of  place  and 
the  affectionate  regard  for  his  neighbourhood 
that  inspire  the  narrator.  No  western  writer, 
not  even  Turgenief  in  his  Note-Book  of  a  Sports- 
man, or  George  Sand  in  La  Mare  au  Diablc,  is 
better  able  to  call  up  the  illusion  and  the  aroma 
of  a  scene  in  the  printed  page.  But  perhaps 
if  a  comparison  be  needed,  we  may  turn  first, 
as  Dr.  Seal  suggests,  to  Flaubert  and  his  ac- 
count of  Felicite  in  "The  Simple  Heart"  {Trais 
Contcs,  1879).  Of  the  two,  Flaubert  is  more  sure 
and  artistically  exact;  Tagore  more  imagina- 
tive, more  suggestive  of  the  moods  and  hidden 


SHORT  STORIES 


5« 


spirits  of   the   creatures  and   places   he   evokes 
with  the  tale-vvritrr's  talisman. 

It  is  the  month  of  Aswin,  September,  rhcn 
the  story  of  the  GhAt  opens.  The  soft  light 
breath  of  the  early  winter's  morning  air  instils 
new  life  into  men  waking  from  sleep  and  into 
the  leaves  on  the  trees.  The  river  is  high:  \vc 
see  the  water  rising,  till  all  but  four  steps  of 
the  Ghat  arc  covered,  while  three  old  heaps 
of  bricks  are  made  into  islands.  The  fishing 
boats  float  up  with  the  rising  tide;  and  the  water 
in  its  irresponsible  gaiety  rocks  them,  splashing 
on  both  sides  of  them.  "It  shook  their  ears," 
says  the  Ghat,  "as  if  in  sheer  pleasantry."  On 
the  banks  the  ripe  sunshine  lies  with  a  delicious 
yellow  colour,  like  the  champak  flower,  such  as 
it  has  at  no  other  tunc  of  year.  The  boatmen 
seize  their  boats  with  shouts  of  "Ram,  Ram," 
and  set  sail  on  the  flood.  A  Brahmin  comes  down 
to  bathe  and  women  come  to  fetch  water.  Grad- 
ually the  Ghat's  memories  individualise  in  a 
single  figure— that  of  the  young  girl  Kusum. 
When  at  dawn  a  small  thrush  stirred  on  its  nest 
in  a  hole  of  the  bricks,  and  after  shaking  its 
tail-feathers  flew  ofT  piping,  that  was  the  sig- 
nal for  Kusum  to  appear.     "When  her  shadow 


52 


RABINDRANATH  TAGORE 


CH. 


\    i 


s 


fell  on  the  water  I  felt  a  longing  to  hold  it  fast 
in  my  stones,"  says  the  Gldt;  "such  rare  love- 
liness it  had."     And  when  her  anklets  clinked 
the  weeds  and  ferns  were  delighted.    As  for  the 
river — there   was   some   peculiar    understanding 
between  her  heart  and  its  tide.     She  loved  the 
water  like  another  self.    But  a  day  came  when 
Kusum  did  not  appear  at  the  water-side,  and 
her  pkiymates  did  not  ring  changes  on  her  name — 
Kusi,  Rakkusi,  Khushi.     The  Ghdt  understood 
from  them  tiiat  she  had  become  a  child-bride 
and  been  taken  away  to  her  father-in-law's  house, 
as  the  custom  is.    There  was  no  Ganges  there; 
the  people  were  strangers,  and  everything  was 
strange— the  houses,   the  very  road  before  the 
door,  evcr>'thing.    It  was  as  if  they  had  taken  a 
wate»- -lotus  and  tried  to  make  it  grow  on  dry 
lam       A  year  went,  and  Kusum  returned,  still 
a  r --e  child,  but  a  widow.    Her  old  playmates 
ut       gone;   but  when  she   sat   crouched   down 
the  steps  of  the  Ghat,  her  knees  up  to  her 
.hin,    it   seemed   to   her   that   the   river-ripples 
held  up  girlish  hands  and  called  to  her,  Kusi, 
Rakkusi! 

Time    went    on— eight,    ten    years,    and    the 
full    beauty   of   youth   and   young    womanhood 


SHORT  STORIES 


53 


came  to  her.  But  the  GhAt  and  the  folk  who 
frequented  it  still  thought  of  Kusum  as  a  child. 
Then,  one  year,  a  wandering  Sanyasi,  a  tall 
young  ascetic  with  a  radiant  face  and  a  form  of 
great  beauty,  came  to  the  river,  and  entered 
the  ttmple  of  Siva  by  the  Ghat.  Through  that 
shining  emissary  of  the  regions  promised  in 
the  Bhagavadgita  Kusum  was  to  discern  what 
love  and  death  meant.  When  he  held  forth  she 
listened  with  wonder.  She  went  every  day  to 
touch  the  dust  of  his  feet, — it  became  her  service 
to  gather  flowers  for  the  temple  and  wash  its 
floor  with  water  from  the  river.  But  after  a 
time  she  gives  uj)  her  pious  ofiice  and  disappears; 
and  when  she  returns,  and  the  Sanyasi  reproaches 
her,  it  is  clear  from  her  confused  replies  that 
her  life  has  become  centred  in  him,  and  he  has 
become  the  image  of  her  dreams  day  and  night. 
ThereufM)n  he  says  he  has  one  more  word  to 
^ive  her:  "I  leave  here  to-night,  and  you  must 
forget  me:  promise  me  that!"  And  she  promises 
and  he  goes. 

l.ast  of  all,  we  see  her  stand  looking  at  the 
river,  the  Ganges,  hir  one  friend.  "If  it  were 
!U)i  to  take  her  in  its  lap  rsow  in  her  trouble, 
who  would?"  .  .  .    1  he  Ghat  ends  the  tale: 


RABINDRANATH  TAGORE 


CH. 


54 

The  moon  sank,  thf  night  grew  dark;  I  heard  the 
rush  of  the  water,  and  saw  nothing  beside.  But  the 
wind  blew  hard  as  if  it  were  trying  to  blow  out  the  stars 
in  htaven,  (or  fear  their  light  should  show  the  least 
glimpne  of  anything  on  earth.  My  playmate,  who  had 
played  so  long  on  my  stony  knees,  slipped  away— I  could 
not  tell  where. 

In  this  story  Rabindranath  Tagorc  reveals 
the  heart  of  Kusum  by  the  slight  interrogative 
touches  which  he  often  uses  to  give  reality  to 
his  spiritual  portraits  of  women.  He  is  one 
of  the  very  few  talc-writers  who  can  interpret 
women  by  intuitive  art.  The  devotion  and 
the  heroism  of  the  Hindu  wife  he  paints  arc  of 
a  kind  to  explain  to  us  that  though  the  mortal 
rite  of  Suttee  is  ended,  the  spirit  that  led  to  it 
is  not  at  aU  extinct.  It  lives  re-embodied  in 
a  thousand  acts  of  sacrifice,  and  in  many  a  de- 
livering up  of  the  creature-self,  and  its  pride 
of  life  and  womanly  desire. 

Such  a  tale  of  ihe  slow  Suttee  is  told  by  Rabin- 
dranath in  "The  Kxpiation,"  in  which  the  little 
Bengali  wife  of  a  splendid  drone  and  do-nothing 
takes  on  her  own  laad  his  guilt,  when  he  turns 
thief  in  order  to  get  money  to  go  to  England. 
While  he  lives  Uiere  and  casually  picks  up  an 
English  wife  she  i)awns  and  sells  her  jewels  to 


fi 


SHORT  STORIES 


55 


support  him.  What  the  wife  Bindhya  dot* 
in  this  apologue  is  only  the  sacrifue  and  self- 
annihilation  of  the  funeral  pyre  in  another  form. 
In  the  tule  of  anotlier  more  attractive  kind  of 
lurasite— Rasik,  the  fond  hrother—Bansi  shows 
the  same  extraordinary  devotion;  and  Souravi, 
who  loves  Rasik,  is  a  comjianion  portrait  worthy 
to  set  by  Bindhya 's. 

There  you  have  only  one  motive  out  of  many 
dealt  with  in  these  tales  oi  Bengal.  Among  the 
creators  of  the  fantasy  of  place  there  are  few  who 
can  call  up  as  he  does  by  direct  and  indirect 
touches  the  illusion  of  a  scene.  He  is  particu- 
larly skilful  in  working  the  charm  by  means 
of  an  agent  of  romance,  youth  or  maid,  man  or 
woman,  who  is  at  odds  with  ordinary  good  for- 
tune, yet  at  one  with  the  given  environment. 

In  the  story  of  the  "Auspicious  Look"~ 
that  is  the  look  given  by  a  bridegroom  to  his 
bride  at  the  customary  wedding- rite— there  is 
a  savour  of  childish  mystery  about  the  girl  who 
is  the  signal  figure.  She  is  very  beautiful,  and, 
like  the  figure  of  Kusum  in  the  story  of  the  Ghat, 
her  charm  is  used  to  evoke  the  spirit  of  a  river- 
side scene.  She  comes  to  the  water  with  two  duck- 
lings pressed  to  her  bosom  with  both  her  hands; 


l^^st 


M 


'  i 


56  RABINURANATH  TAGORl-:  n^ 

the  wishes  to  kl  them  gc.  in  the  water,  and  yet 
»he  is  afraid  they  will  slru>   "Ut  <»(  her  reach, 
and  as  ahe  iU^y^,  with  the  river-sidr  ^.-^^  gl's- 
tening  bright  at  her  feel  and  tin-  murninK  light 
playing  upon  lur  form,  the  dranulic    inomcnl 
arrives  when  Kanli,  the  hero  i>i  the  lale,  calclu  . 
sight  of  her.        The  girl's  Ixauty  was  rxtrcmcly 
fresh,  as  if  the  arUluer  of  the  world  hul  juU 
set  her  down  after  modelling  her.     li  was  hard 
to  tell  her  age;  her  form  was  w<.maniy.  yet  her 
face  had  a  childish   immaturity   thai    no  vs\k" 
rience  of  the  worM  seemed  even  to  h.i\c  touched. 
The  news  of  her  crt)s.ing  the  myscrious  con- 
fines between  childho.Hl  and  youth  did  not  yet 
seem  to  have  reached  her  own  consciousness." 

The  visitm  brings  the  life  of  Kanli.  as  it  docs 
the  day  itself,  to  a  climax,    lie  g^yvs  to  her  father 
with    the   abruptness    that    one   often    fmds    in 
romance,  and  makes  fi)rmal  proix)sals  fi»r   the 
giri   with   the   ducklings;   and    the   father,   who 
is  a  Brahmin,  says  he  will  gladly  see  his  tlaughter-- 
whom  he  names  Shudha-betrolhed,  as  she  is 
growing  in  years.     All   goes  on  well  until   the 
wedding-day.      In    India,    we    must    remember, 
bride  and  bridegroom  do  not  actually  meet  until 
the  day  when  the  exchange  of  the  "look  auspi- 


M^aH^Bi 


SHORT  STORrES 


57 


cious,"  which  w  in  reality  the  scaling  of  the 
covenant,  passt's  hctwi'cn  the  two.  But  when 
the  rcvcbtion  tomt-s  and  Kanti  ia  able  to  look 
on  the  bent  and  veiletl  head  of  his  bride,  he  sees 
it  in  not  the  girl  of  the  ducklings  at  all.  It  ii 
in  fad  lur  cMcr  sifter. 

At  this  moment  when  he  and  the  bride  are 
seated  tt)Kelher  after  the  lifting  of  the  bridal 
veil,  and  he  tries  to  reconcile  him.seU  to  the 
situation  and  bear  without  resentment  the  gaieties 
of  the  bridal  chamber,  there  is  a  stir  among 
the  guests,  and  the  bride  starts  up  from  his  side 
with  a  cry  oi'  alarm.  A  jM't  leveret  runs  across 
the  floor,  follt)\ved  by  the  girl  of  the  ducklings, 
who  cat  (lies  it  and  presses  it  to  her  check  as 
she  caresses  it. 

••Tliat's  the  mad  giri,"  the  people  whisper 
to  each  other,  and  the  serxants  try  to  take  her 
from  the  room.  She  pays  no  heed,  however, 
and  sits  herself  down  before  the  bridal  pair, 
scanning  them  with  childlike  curiosity.  There- 
upon Ranti  asks  her  her  name:  she  docs  not 
answer,  only  r(Kks  her  body  to  and  fro,  while 
some  of  the  guests  i)rcak  out  into  laughter. 
Another  (juestion,  in  which  he  asks  after  her 
ducklings,  is  again  without  effect,  save  that  the 


miklxm^^imi^^A^^'3 


MICROCOPY   RESOIUTION   TIST   CHART 

(ANSI  and  ISO  TEST  CHART  No    2) 


|Z8       I Z5 


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2.2 
2.0 

1.8 


^  APPLIED  IM/1GE     I 

^^  1653   East    Mam   Street 
~.a  Rochester.    Ne«   rork         U609       USA 
'-SS  (716)    482  -  OJOO  -  Phon- 
es ("6)    288  -  5989  -  Fa. 


S8 


RABINDRANATH  TAGORE 


CB. 


U: 


IV    \ 


girl  looks  up  gravely  into  his  face.  There  let 
us  leave  the  mystery,  which  readers  can  solve 
for  themselves  when  the  book  cf  these  stories 
is  added  to  the  writer's  other  English  books. 
But  the  figure  of  the  young  girl,  as  she  first 
appears  at  the  water-side,  or  as  she  sits  after- 
wards with  the  leveret  in  her  arms  looking  up 
and  wondering,  lives  still  as  the  veritable  spirit 
of  the  place  where  she  is  seen.  Rasik  is  only 
the  agent  of  her  unapproachable  maidenhood; 
the  indicator  of  the  mystery. 

In  the  story  of  another  child  of  nature,  "Sweet 
Tongue"— so  called  before  she  is  discovered 
to  be  dumb— we  have  for  setting  another  water- 
side village.  The  village  is  Chandipur,  and 
the  stream  is  for  Bengal  a  small  one;  "rather 
like  a  slender  girl  in  a  household  of  sturdy  coun- 
try folk."  Nature  seemed  to  wish  to  lend  the 
silent  girl  a  voice,  the  lapping  of  the  water, 
the  trilling  of  birds,  the  rustling  of  leaves,  join 
themselves  to  the  voices  of  the  crowd  and  the 
boatmen's  songs,  and  all  mingle  together  mth 
the  constant  movements  and  agitation  of  Na- 
ture, and  break,  as  it  seems,  like  the  surf  on  the 
sea-beach,  in  her  ever-silent  breast.  In  such  tales 
Rabindranath  confesses,  as  he  does  in  his  songs. 


I  II  III  ■iiiiMii  II  I  iim  iiii—ii  I    iiniiii  iim  I  III  1 1  iiwiii  imii   iiiiiiir    i   iiiiiiii^iii  i  ii  iim  in      iiiiiiiiiii 


V  SHORT  STORIES  59 

his  belief  in  the  identity  of  nature  and  man,  of 
nature  and  supernature. 

So  far  the  tales  described  have  been  virtu- 
ally of  everyday  life  in  Bengal.     But  one  re- 
mains among  Mr.  Ranjan  Sen's  vcxsions,  "The 
Hungry  Stones,"  which  shows  a  truly  uncanny 
power    in    romance.      In    it    the    place-interest 
centres  in  a  dead  and  deserted  palace  of  white 
marble,  very  stately  in  its  Persian  courts  and 
galleries,  standing  above  a  Ghat  or  river-stair 
in  Hyderabad.    It  had  been  built  two  centuries 
and  a  half  earlier  by  the  Shah  Mahamed  II., 
and  long  abandoned.     Then  a  cotton-toll  agent 
or  collector  takes  up  his  abode  there,  a  creature 
of  uncommon  tastes  in  his  way,  and  given  to 
look  for  wonders  in  his  experience;  and  it  is  he 
who  tells  the  tale,  though  in  no  more  romance- 
befitting  a  place  than  the  waiting-room  at  a 
railway  station. 

He  is  first  made  aware  of  something  unusual 
when  he  has  taken  a  chak  down  to  the  lowest 
step  of  the  long  palace  stairs  one  evening  to  sit 
by  the  water.  He  notices  "the  dense  sweet 
aroma  of  mint,  anise,  and  wUd  basil"  that  floats 
down  from  the  neighbouring  hills.  The  sun 
goes;  a  tall  drop-scene  of  deep  shadow  falls  on 


6o 


RABINDRANATH  TAGORi: 


CH. 


11  f 


!|^ 


ly 


the  last  of  the  day's  pageant;  and  he  starts  up 
with  the  intention  of  a  ride  in  the  cool  evening, 
when   he   hears   footsteps.     He   looks   up,   and 
sees  nobody;  and  goes  back  to  his  seat.     But 
more,  and  yet  more,  footfalls  sound  as  if  a  whole 
troop  of  girls,  merry  and  light-footed,  are  run- 
ning down  to  the  river  to  bathe.     And  next, 
although  the  stream  remains  still,  it  is  certain 
that  the  bathers  arc  swimming  there  and  ruffling 
the  water,  and  throwing  up  the  spray  like  hand- 
fuls  of  pearls.    Next  day  when  he  returns  from 
his  office  work  and  goes  upstairs  to  the  lonely 
state  chambers  at  twilight  he  is  aware  of  a  tu- 
mult within,  as  if  a  great  assembly  had  just 
broken  up.    The  drip  of  the  water  in  the  foun- 
tain resolves  itself  into  the  clink  of  golden  orna- 
ments, the  tinkle  of  anklets,  the  peal  of  great 
copper    bells    and    other    earthly    and    festive 

music. 

That  night  he  sleeps  in  a  small  room  that 
adjoins  the  other,  and  he  is  visited  by  the  ap- 
parition of  one  of  these  old  palace  dwellers— 
an  Arab  maid  wi<.h  firm  well-rounded  arms 
that  seem  hard  as  marble  below  her  ample  sleeves. 
A  filmy  piece  of  stuff  that  hangs  from  a  corner 
of  her  cap  hides  her  face;  a  curved  dagger  is 


-Vis^imf'-i'ix  .c^ESf.-'at^  ::tgc!MMgsgtf:.-'iJiPuii»jii'.^a»rf  iraiK.-jff-.^^- 


SHORT  STORIES 


6i 


at  her  waist.  She  leads  him  on,  through  wide 
porticoes  and  narrow  passages,  wide  slatc-roonis 
and  cupboard-Hke  chambers,  till  they  come  to 
a  dark  blue  screen  at  the  entrance  to  one  room. 
She  points  significantly  with  fell  tale  fingers  to 
the  foot  of  the  screen,  and  he  knows  that  behind 
it  sits  a  fierce  African  Eunuch  dressed  in  kin- 
cob,  a  naked  scimitar  upon  his  knees,  swaying 
himself  to  and  fro. 

We  cannot  follow  the  dream- tale  through  all 
its  mazes.  The  Iranian  slaxc-girl  becomes  the 
cotton-clerk's  nightly  visitant;  and  eveiy  night 
her  mysterious  call  and  his  wanderings  begm 
afresh,  till  at  last  she  seems  to  be  half  material- 
ised in  the  day  too.  She  would  ai^pear  by  lamp- 
light, seen  first  in  a  tall  mirror  which  reflected 
the  splendour  of  a  Chahzada,  the  gleam  of  a 
bronze  neck,  the  melancholy  glance  of  two  large 
dark  eyes;  while  a  hinting,  a  mere  tinge  of  un- 
uttered  speech,  seemed  to  hang  on  her  lips. 
But  then,  just  as  she  turned  to  lean  towards 
him,  l.er  form  swaying  like  the  slender  stem  of 
a  creeper,  she  would  melt  away  in  the  mirror. 
With  a  scattering  of  sparks  the  bright  gleams  of 
her  jewels,  and  the  broken  glimpses  of  her  smile, 
her  pity  and  longing  and  unknown  trouble,  were 


TU 


62 


RABINDRANATH  TAGORE 


CH. 


u 


alike  consumed.    What  wonder  that  the  dreamer 
of  the  vision  calls  aloud  in  his  invocation: 

O  Beauty  celestial,  in  the  lap  of  what  creature  of 
the  desert,  on  the  bunk  of  what  cool  fountain  under  the 
date-palms,  did  you  take  your  birth?  What  fierce  Bedouin 
tore  you  from  your  mother's  breasts  like  a  bud  from 
a  flowering  tree,  and  rode  away  with  you  on  a  horse, 
lightning-footed,  across  the  burning  sands?  .  .  . 

The  refrain  of  Meher  Ali,  the  mad  old  fellow 
who  haunts  the  palace  ruins,  "Keep  away,  keep 
away!  all  false,  all  false!"  sends  at  last  the  dc 
wildered  cotton-surveyor  to  ask  the  permanent 
clerk  at  the  office  what  it  can  all  mean?  But 
the  old  clerk  can  only  affirm  again  that  they 
who  enter  the  palace  do  so  at  their  peril.  Its 
hungry  stones,  fired  by  the  measureless  lusts 
and  ungratified  desires  of  those  who  once  lived 
in  the  palace,  seek  like  a  demon  for  a  living  man 
to  devour.  Old  Meher  Ali  alone  has  escaped 
after  the  three  fatal  nights  required  to  work 
their  spells;  and  even  he  did  so  at  the  cost  of 
his  senses.  Hence  his  ominous  cry:  "Keep 
away,  all  false,  keep  away!" 

Now,  when  we  think  of  places  on  which  ro- 
mance has  breathed  the  spell  of  a  past  crowded 
with  apparitions  and  filled  with  half-realisable 


SHORT  STORIES 


63 


memories — places  like  Villiers  de  L'Isle-Adam's 
hail  in  Axel,  Balzac's  Flemish  house  of  mystery, 
Scott's  "House  of  Lammermoor,"  Edgar  Poc's 
"House  of  Usher,"  or  Childe  Roland's  "Dark 
Tower" — we  shall  feel  tempted,  after  reading  the 
story  of  "The  Hungry  Stones,"  to  add  the  Palace 
of  Barich  to  their  number. 

Rabindranath  Tagorc  indeed  is  a  phcc-charmer 
in  his  tales.  For  him,  houses  have  souls,  old 
ruins  may  be  powerful  as  witches  in  their  sor- 
cery, a  river-stair  can  count  the  footfalls  of 
ages,  and  a  door  can  remember  its  dead. 

This  is  only  part  of  his  tale-teller's  equip- 
ment; for  he  is  very  tender  to  his  human  folk, 
especially  to  his  women  of  sorrow  and  children, 
and,  what  is  perhaps  his  favourite  among  them 
all,  the  child  of  nature — what  the  Bengali  calls 
sometimes  a  '  mad  Chandi,"  a  possessed  one, 
with  a  certain  tenderness  as  for  a  creature  held 
by  a  spirit  beyond  the  common.  His  page  often 
tells  of  the  unconscious  creature  that  is  very 
near  the  sources  of  nature,  drinkmg  her  clear 
dew  and  becoming  one  with  her  in  her  play  of 
life  and  death. 

His  stories,  finally,  if  we  can  judge  by  the 
imperfect  English  versions  we  have,  are  written 


';^,:ig*!¥^  7i^WS>*«T  <:^?«v..:!S  im'\''SiSiP^/^  ri^Ofi^J^  ''JgS^^^smR^ 


If!  ^' 


« 

if 


64  RABINDR^VNATH  TAGORE        ch.v 

in  a  style  of  their  own,  here  and  there  remind- 
ing one  a  little  of  Hawthorni'  in  his  most  elusive 
vein,  or  Tur<;cnitf  in  his  romantic  tales.  It  is 
as  if  a  folk-talc  method  were  elaborated  with 
literary  art,  inclinini:  to  the  imaginative  side  of 
evcr>clay  life,  yet  i''-  'Uing  fondly  on  the  human 
folk  it  portrayed. 


i 


^fL^^^:  -*^"iVt?-'i''''*"v"^ 


;awpfi3.T^ir5aw'< 


JlVrJl'''s(:^L 


CHAPTER  VI 

THE  babe's  paradise 

Besides,  the  (hiUniiHMl  of  the  day  has  kc{>f , 
Against  you  come,  some  Orient  pearls  uav.ept. 

The  imagination  of  the  poet  is  vcr>'  near  the 
child's.  In  the  Indian  Vaishnava  sont.:,  which 
is  not  meant  for  cniidien  at  all,  you  «»flea  find 
touches  of  their  fantasy,  ruallinj,'  the  way  in 
which  they  surT)rise  the  young  .^od  in  their  midst, 
or  find  the  wonder  of  the  wurUl  in  the  dust  at 
their  feet.  Such  is  the  cr>'  of  the  shepherd- 
boys  in  one  song,  often  (juoted,  who  find  they 
have  been  playing  with  Krishna  and  treating 
him  as  a  common  school-fellow: 

"Wliy,  think  how  often  \vc  quarrelled  with  you  and 
called  you  names;  how  often  v.c  rode  on  your  shoulders, 
and  you  on  ours;  how  often  we  ate  up  the  best  pieces 
and  only  gave  you  the  crumbs!  Did  you  take  these  things 
to  heart  then  and  run  away?" 

You  have  only  to  reverse  the  magic  lens  in 
order  that  the  grown-up  man  or  woman  may 
look  at  the  cliild  with  the  same  wonder  and 
sense  of  new  discovery.     Its  ways  are  at  once 

6s 


■•:\w.'ir!sjv2 


';jjT;^s5a?Z-^- 


•HWjr^.rj 


'I^i'^. 


66 


RABINDR.\NATH  TAGORE 


CM. 


SO  innocent  and  m)steru)us,  so  foolish  and  wise, 
so  preposterous  and  lovable.  It  b  this  age's 
reversal  that  explains  The  Crescent  Moon,  so 
far  as  the  book  needs  anything  to  reveal  its 
midday  mcK)nshinc.  Some  of  us  may  have  ex- 
pected more  patent  wonders,  remembering  thv»se 
in  the  Indian  story  of  the  Jat  and  the  Bania, 
where  the  Bania  KkjIcs  into  the  mouth  of  the 
mosquito  that  is  going  to  bite  him  and  sees 
there  a  paJacc  of  burning  gold,  and  a  lovely 
princess  sitting  at  one  of  its  many  windows. 
With  this  idea  we  may  have  counted  on  a  cres- 
cent moon  of  pure  magic,  and  a  moony  world 
of  arabcscjue  extravagance;  but  in  fact  Rabin- 
dranath  Tagore,  like  a  true  conjurer,  works 
his  enchantment  with  simple  means:  a  little  dust, 
a  puddle  of  water,  a  flower,  some  ink  and  pai)cr. 
The  poems  in  The  Crescent  Moon  carry  us 
very  near  this  everyday  Paradise,  simply  by 
showing  a  regard,  at  once  joyous  and  tender, 
for  the  changing  moods  and  wayward  desires  of 
a  child.  The  book  is  delightful  to  us  alike  for 
the  fantasy  of  its  oriental  background  and  for 
its  writers  sympathy;  every  page  of  it  gives 
us  a  picture  touched  in  with  the  fond  life-like 
detail  of  a  child-lover. 


I 


tfllW^^l^^d'T    KA    *-«■> 


vt 


THK  B/VBE'S  PARADISE 


67 


We  sec  the  sm:iU  boy  sit  al  the  window  to 
watch  how  the  shadow  of  the  banyan  tree  wrig- 
gles on  the  disturbed  water  when  the  women 
come  to  fill  their  jars  at  the  p<5nd.  We  sec  the 
child  taking  iiis  father's  books  to  scribble  in, 
or  writing-paiHjr  to  make  boats  with;  and  how 
he  watches  the  evening  come  and  the  old  fisher- 
woman  gather  herbs  for  her  supper  by  the  side 
of  the  pond,  or  the  watchman  swing  his  lantern 
and  walk  with  the  shadow  at  his  side.  The 
pictures  of  a  child  gathering  golden  champa 
flowers  that  drop  on  the  forest  path,  dancing  on 
the  sea-shore,  or  sitting  in  the  dust  to  play  with 
a  broken  twig  and  his  own  fancies,  arc  suc- 
ceeded by  another  of  the  crying  urchin  whose 
fingers  and  face  are  both  tear-stained  and  ink- 
stained.  To  appreciate  the  last  poem  to  the 
full,  we  need  to  know  something  of  the  custom 
of  Indian  school-children.  In  that  true,  if  ap- 
parently Active,  history  of  a  Bengal  Raiyat, 
"Govinda  Samanta,"  which  traces  the  career 
of  its  hero  from  childhood  up,  we  arc  told  that 
he  always  returned  home  from  school  with  his 
hands,  face,  and  garment  bespattered  with  ink; 
for  whenever  he  wrote  on  the  palm-leaf  and 
made  a  wrong  letter  or  formed  one  amiss,  he 


-— ^.^     -     -Vi— lu  »      ...r 


08 


RABINURiVNATH  TACiORi: 


<H. 


1  f 


woiiUI  immifliatrly  brush  it  off  with  his  hand  or 
hi.  wrist.  In  I<al)iM(h.ui.iih'M  writings  you  find 
intinito  sympaths  wiili  the  habi-  in  tr<)u!>lc  ami 
the  small  hoy  at  «)<l(l.s  with  authority.  l\v  under- 
stands the  apiK-tite  of  the  growing  thing  and 
the  gricjly  lips  of  the  l)al)o.  He  ends  this  very 
pwm  with  one  <»t*  the  naive  recoils  In  which 
he  often  indulges  in  his  verse.  In  this  case  the 
foibles  of  the  elders  are  brought  into  range  with 
th«-  inrnKcnt  iniquities  of  the  children. 

"  livciybody  knows,"  he  cries  to  the  child 
at  odds,  "how  you  l«)\'c  sweet  things— is  that 
why  they  call  you  greedy?  .  .  .  What  then," 
he  continues,  "what  then  would  they  call  us 
who  love  you?"  Th«'  irony  of  this  (jucslion  is 
not  fully  seen  until  one  detects  that  by  it  the 
filiolater  is  unmusked  in  his  own  love  for  the 
sweetness  of  the  little  rascal. 

Again,  in  the  song  "When  and  Why"  there 
is  another  reading  of  the  babe's  litany  and  the 
eternal  philosophy  of  appetite  and  desire  and 
delight.    For,  says  the  poet: 


\V!ir;i  1  1)1  ihK  swict  thin::-,  to  your  Rrccdy  hands,  I  know 
v.liv  l!u;r  i^  !:"inv  in  the  v  !;;>  of  i!u-  lltc.vtr,  -.nd  why  fruits  arc 
sciritly  I'llK-'l  with  swccl  juii .  ,— when  I  bring  sw.ct  things  to 
your  ^rccuy  iiuirvi^. 


^^.J«■  .ii'i»TK.«Lr:^.~E  c7:^n»iViiL< 


VI 


THL  BABKS  PARAUl^E 


In  his  sl()r>'  of  the  frult-scller,  in  one  of  his 
pnwsc-lMKikH,  which  reads  very  Uko  a  chiptcr 
directly  out  of  his  own  exiK-rierue,  we  have 
a  small  daughter  of  the  writer  liimself,  Mini, 
as  the  thief  li^'urc.  Her  childish  desires,  her 
mischief,  and  her  drnllury  are  contrasted  with 
the  tall  form  of  the  Kahuli  hawker  or  fruit- 
seller  who  brings  grapes  and  raisins  and  apricots 
to  the  diH)r.  The  sack  which  he  carries  is  like 
Fortunatus's  purs«',  a  wonder-worker;  to  the 
child's  mind  it  is  mysterious  and  inexhaustibli ; 
and  it  becomes  the  Kabuli's  joke,  when  Mini 
asks  him  wha'  there  is  inside  it,  to  reply  that  it 
contains  an  elephant. 

My  house  stcxxl  })y  the  road-side.  Mini  ran  to  the 
window  and  btKan  shouting  at  the  top  of  her  voice, 
"Kabuli,  11'^!    kabuli!" 

Clad  in  loose  dirty  attire,  with  a  goodly  tur!)an  on 
his  hrad  and  sacks  hanging  from  his  shoulders,  a  tall 
Kabuli  was  travelling  slowly  along  the  road  with  some 
baskets  of  grapes  in  his  hand. 

A  few  days  after  I  found  my  daughter  sitting  on  the 
bench  near  the  door  and  chattering  away  without  pause 
to  the  Kabuli  whd  sat  at  her  feet,  smiling  and  listenintr. 
I  noticed  that  the  corner  of  her  little  sari  was  full  of 
almonds  and  raisin-. 

Such  was  the  beginning  of  the  friendship 
bctVT'Ccn  the  qiieorly  assorted  pair,  a  friendship 


'  I', 


issiBKSiumBisKa-Sk'.'iiss^uinairLiii  ■* 


70 


RiVBINDRANATlI  TAGORE 


CH. 


ii 


cemented  by  continual  sweetmeats.    The  father 
of  Mini  also  makes  friends  with  the  Kabuli. 

My  morning  conversations  with  Raharaat  sitting 
before  the  tabic  in  my  little  study  had  for  me  to  some 
extent  the  effect  of  travel.  High  unscalcable  and  in- 
accessible chains  of  hills  of  a  burnt  red  hue  on  either 
side,  a  slender  arid  pathway  between,  lines  of  loaded 
camels  pacing  onwards,  turbaned  merchants,  wayfarers 
on  camels  and  on  foot,  some  carrj'ing  lances  and  others 
the  old-fashioned  Hint  matchlocks, — this  panorama  would 
unroll  and  pass  before  my  eyes  as  the  Kabuli  talked  about 
his  motherland  in  his  deep  rumbling  voice  and  his  stam- 
mering Bengali. 

In  the  end  Rahamat  kills  a  man,  and  is  sen- 
tenced to  eight  years'  imprisonment.  When  he 
reappears,  it  is  on  Mini  s  wedding-day. 

I  did  not  recognise  him  at  first.  He  had  not  his  sacks 
nor  his  long  hair  nor  his  hne  spirited  bearing.  At  last 
I  remembered  his  smile. 

"Hullo!  Rahamat,  when  did  you  come?"  I  said. 

"Yesterday  I  came  out  of  jail,"  he  answered. 

I  told  him  I  was  ver>'  busy  and  that  he  had  better 
go.    Then  he  said  as  he  stood  and  slmflled  by  the  door: 

"May  I  not  see  the  child  once  more?" 

But  this  was  not  to  be,  and  with  a  dumb  troubled  look 
the  man  went  away.  He  returned,  how  ver,.  and  coming 
near,  said: 

"I  have  brought  these  grapes  and  almonds  and  raisins 
for  the  child.    Give  them  to  her  from  me,  I  pray?    No, 


VI 


THE  babb:'s  paradise 


you  must  not  pay  me  for  them.  Just  a!^  you  have  a 
daughter,  so  have  1  one  at  home;  and  it  is  in  remembrance 
of  her  Uttle  face  that  I  bring  some  fruit  for  your  child. 
I  do  not  come  to  sell  it.  .  .  ." 

Saying  this  he  thrust  his  hand  into  the  fold^=  of  his 
loose  ample  cloak  and  brought  out  a  piece  of  dirty  paper 
from  somewhere  near  his  breast.  With  great  tare  he 
opened  the  folds  and  spread  it  out  upon  my  table. 

I  saw  an  imprint  of  a  tiny  palm  upon  the  paper,  a 
simple  mark  got  by  smearing  the  hand  in  lampblack. 
With  this  strange  token  of  the  child  placed  in  his  bosom 
Rahamat  had  come  to  sell  fruit  in  Calcutta  streets,  as 
if  the  touch  of  the  child's  hand  soothed  the  heart  that 
was  torn  by  the  pangs  of  separation. 

The  "Babe's  Pageant,"  one  of  the  earlier 
poems  of  the  Crescent  Moon,  again  calls  up  the 
story  of  Govinda.  His  mother  teaches  Govin 
to  walk  to  the  sound  of  the  doggerel  verse: 

Chali,  chali,  pa,  pa! 
(Walk,  walk,  step  by  step.) 

Presently  the  child  walks  or  wriggles  until  he 
falls  into  the  tank  In  the  yard  of  the  house,  and 
is  saved  by  good  luck.  At  a  later  stage  he  is 
saved  from  the  wrath  of  the  Five-faced  Pancho 
or  Pancharana,  one  of  the  gods,  another  form 
of  "the  all-destroying  Siva."  Govin  in  fact 
had  offended  him,  and  a  fit  was  the  consequence. 
Happily  Alanza,  the  boy's  grandmother,  knows 


I  1 


72 


RABINDR.VNATH  TAGORE 


ai. 


out  of  her  long  experience  what  is  to  be  done  to 
propitiate  the  deity,  as  in  another  page  we  saw 
how  the  birth-god  wrote  the  words  of  fate  on 
the  babe's  forehead. 

The  secret  of  Rabindranath's  understanding 
of  the  child  lies  very  near  the  secret  of  his  whole 
art  as  a  poet.  In  his  poetry  he  brings  the  in- 
nocence of  a  child's  mind  to  play  upon  life, 
love  and  death,  and  the  phenomena  of  nature. 
He  knows  that  the  figurative  delight  of  the 
child  points  the  mode  of  representing  the  wonder 
of  the  earth  that  philosophy  finds  it  so  hard  to 
reduce  to  order. 

How  figurative,  how  concrete,  the  Indian 
mode  has  always  tended  to  be  we  can  learn  by 
turning  up  a  page  of  the  Upanishads.^  The 
father,  in  teaching  the  boy  how  to  get  at  the 
subtile  essence  of  the  greater  self,  tells  him  to 
bring  the  fruit  of  the  Nyagrodha  tree: 


"Here  is  one,  sir,"  says  the  child. 

"Break  it." 

"It  is  broken,  sir." 

"What  do  you  see  there?" 

"These  seeds,  almost  infinitesimal." 

"Break  one  of  them."' 

» 12th  Khanda,  Khandogya  Upa)iishad. 


ft    .■4*vr'-.'.V  "if  ^>'>>.»' ;  ■;>,  \t-V  •■.'  ~  ir**;^^'  ;*  ■  'r^ ,' 


.-.'   ct  r*"  ■>  _  •  .'H*i!--r^''-*i-^  .^ V.  r 


VI 


THE  B/J3E'S  PAR/\D1SE 


73 


"It  is  broken,  sir." 

"What  (io  you  see  there?" 

"Not  anything,  sir." 

The  father  said:  "My  son,  that  subtile  essence  which 
you  do  not  perceive  there,  of  that  very  essence  this  great 
NyagrcKlha  tree  exists. 

"Believe  il,  my  son.  That  which  is  the  Mibtile  essence, 
in  it  all  that  exists  has  its  self.  It  is  the  True.  It  is  the 
Self,  and  thou,  O  Svctaketu,  art  it." 

In  many  pages  of  this  Moon-bock  we  have 
the  clear  hints  of  the  reality  that  underlies  the 
child's  half-comprehended  belief  in  the  nearness 
of  Paradise  and  its  identity  with  earth.  The 
longing  for  the  moon  and  the  cloud-horses  of 
the  sky,  or  for  the  enchanted  country  depicted 
at  night  by  the  shadows  of  the  lantern,  is  a 
clue  to  the  child's  faith. 

Herbert  Spencer  saw  in  the  appetites  of  the 
child  only  the  insatiable  hunger  of  the  beast- 
innate  at  a  lower  stage.  Rabindranath  Tagore 
has  learnt  to  divine  in  them  the  first  putting 
forth  of  the  desires  which,  being  repeated  in  the 
other  plane  of  intelligence,  seek  out  the  path  to 
heaven  itself.  The  signs  indeed  are  clearly  to 
be  read  in  certain  poems,  and  in  that  entitled 
"Benediction"  they  arc  given  the  effect  of  so 
many  dkect  intimations: 


II 

I 
?t  . 

i-    i 


II 


8  1= 


74 


RABINDRANATH  TAGORE 


oi. 


Bless  thL  Utile  heart,  this  white  soul  that  has  won  the  kist 

of  hcairn  for  our  earth. 

He  loirs  the  lii^ht  of  the  sun,  he  loves  the  slight  of  his  mother's 
face. 

He  has  not  Irdnied  to  despise  the  dust  and  hanker  after  gold. 

Clasp  him  to  yo-'    heart  and  bless  him. 

He  has  come  into  this  land  of  an  hundred  cross-roads. 

I  kno'iC  not  himi  he  chose  you  from  the  croud,  came  to  your 
door,  and  grasped  your  hand  to  ask  his  way. 

He  will  follow  you,  laughing,  and  talking,  and  not  a  doubt 
in  his  heart. 

Keep  his  trust,  lead  him  straight  and  bless  him. 

In  the  story  of  "The  Trespass"  two  boys, 
the  tresi)assers,  dare  one  another  to  seal  mad- 
liavi  flowers  from  the  court  of  a  temple.  The 
temple  is  owned  by  Jaikali,  a  widow,  and  in 
the  end  an  unclean  spirit  in  the  shape  of  a  pig 
breaks  into  the  court  where  one  of  the  boys, 
Nalin,  has  been  imprisoned.  The  priest  drives 
out  the  pig  and  Jaikali  punishes  the  boy  for  his 
desecration. 

Let  those  who  will  shake  their  heads  over 
the  superstition  of  Jaikali.  Rabindranath  Ta- 
gore  learnt  in  the  house  of  his  father,  the  Ma- 
harshi,  to  turn  away  in  his  religion  from  that 
old  idolatr '.  But  in  his  poetry  he  is  true  to 
the  \'aisima  'a  tradition,  whose  poets  brought 
new  life  to  their  art  by  turning  to  the  folk-life 


,-sS;^  ,.,:vjtf'^4     xi- 


VI 


THE  BABE'S  PARADISE 


75 


and  folk-speech  of  Bengal.  He  has,  in  truth, 
known  how  to  see  the  child  with  the  mother's 
eyes  and  the  mother  with  the  child's;  he  has 
learnt  to  make  a  heaven  with  the  scent  of  a 
citampa  flower  and  a  little  dust. 


M-t 


1 


i^!iH?;%.f<^'^ais^^ 


L»3l 


II' 


ll 


CHAPTER  VII 


THE   PLAYWRIGUT 


CoNSTAHi.!:. — Who  arc  you  making  an  uproar  here  at  this 
late  hour  of  the  night? 

Stack  Managkk.— We  are  jatrawalas  (actors),  and  who, 
pray,  are  you? 

When  living  in  Calcutta  a  boy  of  fourteen  or 
fifteen,  Rabindranath  wrote  a  plu>'  for  an  am- 
ateur dramatic  c()mi)any  in  that  city  and  acted 
in  it  himself;  and  since  then  he  must  have  writ- 
ten fully  a  score  in  all,  of  which  the  best  known 
in  India  have  not  yet  been  translated  into  Eng- 
lish. Chilra,  The  King  of  the  Dark  Chamber, 
and  The  Post  Office  are  however  available  now; 
and  the  two  last  have  been  produced  by  the 
Irish  Players  in  Dublin  and  at  the  Court  Theatre 
in  London,  with  perhaps  as  near  a  bid  at  the 
Indian  stage  illusion  as  one  can  hope  to  get 
under  the  circumstances.  Another  play  asso- 
ciated with  his  name  and  referred  to  in  an  earlier 
page,  The  Maharani  of  Arakan,  was  not  of  his 
own  writing,  but  adapted  by  Mr.  Calderon  from 
one  of  his  stories.    Judged  by  a  London  stand- 

76 


;j^is!«r 


VII 


THE  PLAYWRIGHT 


77 


ard,  it  may  seem  that  all  his  dramatic  work  is 
lacking    in    ordiiuiry    stage   effect,    but    to    this 
criticism  one  can  only  reply  that  his  plays  were 
written  to  attain  a  naturalness  of  style  and  a 
simplicity  of  mode  which  only  Irish  players  have 
so  far  realised  for  us.    In  many  cases  they  have 
been  written  to  be  acted  in  the  open  air  by  a 
company  of  boys,  without  scenery  or  any  elab- 
orate fittings,  and  this  too  has  aflected  the  form 
into  which  they  are  thrown.     Beyond  this  it  is 
with  the  Indian  drama  as  with  the  song;  it  tends, 
as  Shakuntdld  may  tell,  to  a  fluidity  of  move- 
ment, with  no  altcmi)t  at  what  we  may  call  a 
dramatic  pattern  in  the  play.    There  is  no  bid 
for  a  curtain,  no  holding  up  of  the  moment  of 
suspense,  in  order  to  force  a  sensation. 

A  page  of  a  Hindoo  travel- book  by  the  late 
Sholanauth  Chundcr  may  be  borrowed  to  show 
what  kind  of  theatre  it  was  that  Rabindranath 
had  to  count  upon  at  home  when  he  began  his 
play-writing.  The  scene  was  the  courtyard  of 
a  Brindabun  shrine,  which  recalls  the  old  gal- 
leried  innyards  such  as  the  house  at  South- 
wark,  where  Elizabethan  plays  were  acted. 

The  courtyard  had  been  hung  over  with  a  rich  awning. 
Hundreds  of  lamps  burned  on  all  sides  to  illuminate  the 


1       1 

J   Ml 


^B^is^i¥^sm'ii^s:mmmssst^^mBs^!^s^x^^^'^i'^i^ 


78 


RABINDRANATH  TAGORE 


cu. 


i  i 


scene.  The  ample  space  was  thronged  by  a  picturesque 
audience  of  turbancd  Vrijbashecs  squatting  on  the  floor. 
The  Vrijmaces  in  parti-coloured  dresses  sat  beneath  the 
cloisters.  In  the  centre  of  the  square  was  a  raised  dais, 
on  each  side  of  which  stood  boys  in  livery,  holding  two 
torches  in  the  true  Hindoo  mode.  .  .  . 

The  play  had  for  theme  the  time-honoured 
divine  intrigue  of  Radha  and  Krishna,  relit  red 
apparently  by  moments  of  boisterous  low  com- 
edy: 

High  on  the  dais  sat  a  lovely  boy  in  superb  female 
garb,  but  with  a  coronet  on  his  head— personating  the 
heroine.  The  other  principal  actor  on  the  stage  was 
K  ishna,  as  a  page;  the  performance  struck  as  something 
novel— midway  between  an  English  play  and  an  up- 
roarious Bengalee  Jatra.  The  play  was  lyrical  in  effect, 
as  most  Indian  plays  are,  or  were.  The  singers — deep 
modulated  male  voices  or  clear  boyish  trebles— were  ac- 
companied by  cymbal  or  tabor,  and  sometimes  by  the 
murali  or  flute.  There  was  harmony  too  in  the  dialogue, 
we  are  told;  and  it  was  a  great  pleasure  to  hear  Krishna 
speak  in  melodious  Vrij-buli— the  language  most  probably 
of  the  ancient  Yadas.  Radha  had  an  arch  smile  on  her 
face,  and  Krishna  a  penitential  visage. 

Possibly  Krishna's  sad  mien  affected  the  play- 
goers, for  we  read  that  at  the  close  the  spectators 
sat  silent,  and  burst  forth  in  no  plaudits  or  cries 
of    nurryboic!     The    writer    ends    his    account 


vn 


THE  PLAYWRIGHT 


79 


by  speaking  of  the  movement  for  an  improved 
HindtK)   theatre   at    Calcutta.     When   Chunder 
wrote,  Rabindranath  was  only  a  boy  of  eight; 
another  six  or  seven  years  and  he  was  already 
helping  in  the  movement  for  a  new  theatre.    We 
need  hardly  exclaim  over  the  taking  of  feminine 
parts  and  the  chief  parts  too  in  a  piece,  by  boys 
as  being  at  all  strange,  when  we  remember  how 
our   own   theatre   for   long   followed    the   same 
custom.     On    the    unadorned    stage   at    Shanti 
Niketan  the  boys  of  the  school  take  the  most 
exacting  parts,  needing  both  mimetic  and  vocal 
skill,   with  great  spirit  and  without  awkward- 
ness; and  at  Bradfield  College  we  have  seen  the 
same  practice  maintained  admirably   in   Greek 

drama. 

Of  the  two  plays  acted  over  here,   The  Post 

Office  {Dakghar  in  the  original)  and  Tlie  King 

of  the  Dark  Chamber,  I  saw  the  first  when  it 

was  produced  at  the  Court  Theatre,  with  Synge's 

mordant   comedy,    The   Well   of  the   Saints,   as 

an  Incongruous  companion-piece.     The  story  of 

The  Post  Office  turns  upon  the  longing  of  a  small 

boy  who  is  a  prisoner,  unable  to  be  moved  from 

the  village  hut,  where  sickness  holds  him  fast. 

He  is  hoi)€'s  most  pitiful  pensioner,  living  in  a 


fi 


Km*iiir*?*.- 


8o 


RABINDRANATII   rAGORE 


CH. 


i!_ 


i^--; 


remote  village  that  has  hardly  been  heJird  of, 
and  he  has  for  his  solace  Iwen  led  to  believe  that 
the  Kmg  himself  is  sending  him  a  letter.  Iljre, 
you  may  think,  is  a  slender  thread  by  which  to 
move  the  pulleys.  But  as  it  was  acted,  even 
with  the  drawback  of  having  a  partly  Irish, 
instead  of  an  Indian,  characterisation  of  its 
village  humours,  it  proved  moving  and  par- 
ticularly effective  in  the  stroke  of  tragedy  re- 
deemed at  the  close.  The  pathos  would  have 
been  too  much  for  a  stage-idyll,  except  that 
imagination  saved  it,  and  that  in  the  Indian 
order  death  is  so  often  not  catastrophe  at  all, 
but  a  blessed  escape. 

The  story  of  the  boy,  Amal,  is  clear  as  folk- 
talc,  up  to  the  point  where  the  King  s  letter 
and  the  chief  motive  grow,  or  seem  to  be  grow- 
ing, too  significant  for  mere  tale  telling,  and 
need  the  dramatic  emphasis.  The  boy  sits  at 
his  window,  from  which  every  one  who  passes 
is  seen  like  a  messenger  of  the  world's  affairs 
and  the  day's  events  denied  to  him.  The  vil- 
lagers—the Curd-seller,  the  Watchman,  the  little 
Flower-girl  Sudha  who  reminds  one  ever  so  slightly 
of  Browning's  Pippa  in  Pip  pa  Passes,  the  Gaffer, 
the  Viilage  Ileadiiiaii  who  is  the  vUiage  bully 


a,-?r-'/».- 


SSt^!^^? 


vo 


THE  PLAYWRIGHT 


8i 


thf>-  go  by  in  a  pageant  of  health  and  pleasure 
before  the  sick  bt)y  Amal's  eyes.  The  Curd- 
seller  calls  up  the  picture  of  his  hill  vilbgc,  and 
Amal  imitates  his  cry: 

"Curds,  lurds,  fine  cunU!"  from  the  dairy  village -from 
the  lountry  of  the  I»anth-mur;i  hills  by  the  Shamli  bank. 
"Curds.  RmKi  curds!"  In  the  caily  morninR  the  women  make 
the  cows  stand  in  a  row  umlcr  the  trees  and  milk  them,  ami  in 
the  evening  they  turn  the  milk  into  cur.ls.  "Curds,  gooti 
curds!"  Hello,  there's  ihc  watchman  on  his  rounds.  Watch- 
man, I  say,  come  and  have  a  word  with  mc. 

It  is  the  Watchman  who  tells  him  of  the  Post 
Ofike,  in  the  new  big  house  over  the  way,  which 
the  boy  has  sc  •    n'ith  its  Hag  flying,  and  the 
people  always  j,    ng  in  and   out.     "One   fine 
day,"  he  tells  Amal,  "  there  may  be  a  Ici       ""or 
you  in  there";  and  with  the  promise  of  the  Kui. 
letter,  and  the  promise  of  the  flower  of  Sudha 
the  little  Flower  girl,  who  will  bring  him  one 
on  her  return,  the  hope  of  Amal  is  sealed.    The 
Curd-scUer  has  already  left  a  jar  of  curds,  and 
promised  a  chiUi-wedding  with  his  niece.     ^Ic 
told  me,  says  Amal,  that  in  the  morning  "  he 
would  milk  with  her  own  hands  the  black  cow 
and  feed  me  with  warm  milk  with  foam  on  it 
irom  a  brand   new  earthen  cmsc;  and  in   the 


^•1»^m:  .'^>  m-NT'.WS^mx^ 


8a 


RABINDRANATH  TAtiORE 


CM 


evenings  she  would  carry  the  lamp  round  the 
tow-housc,  and  then  come  and  sit  by  me  to  tell 
me  tales  of  Champa  and  his  six  brothers."  The 
two  voices  of  the  elders  that  repress  or  enlarge 
the  child's  mind,  and  give  him  the  idea  tliat  the 
day  holds  its  gifts  for  th«'  smallest  jiensioner 
of  time,  are  represented  by  the  Village  Head- 
man and  the  Gaffer.  The  one  sneers  at  the 
boy:  the  other  dilates  on  the  pleasures— the 
flowers,  the  open  road,  the  fakir's  free  path  by 
sea  or  forest  or  mountain,  the  wonders  of  the 
Post  OfTicc— that  wait  to  be  discovered. 

However,  in  taking  up  the  chronicle  at  the 
point  where  The  Post  Office  was  written—its 
exact  date  is  not  mentioned  in  our  miniature 
biography— we  are  neglecting  the  early  work 
which  serves  to  define  its  author's  jKjsition  in 
the  neo-romantic  movement  of  Bengal.  This  is 
the  remarkable  play.  Nature's  Raenge,  whose 
Indian  title  is  Prakritira  PraHsod/ia,  a  notable 
outcome  of  the  revival  whose  stormy  hopes 
and  fears  it  helps  to  explain.  While  in  advance 
of  the  negative  criticism  of  life  expressed  in  that 
Bengali  Wcrthcr — the  Udvranta  Prema— it  is  in 
itsti  another  confession-book  of  egoism.  The 
protagonist   of   the   play   is  a   Sanyasi— master 


VB 


THE  PLAYWRIGHT 


8i 


of  a    ,Totesquc  humour  which  vents  itself  on 
nature 'an.l  man  alike    Like  PararcUus.  he  scek-4 
to  transcend  human  wintlom,  wrest  the  very  secret 
of  the  divine,  and  attain  the  imthway  of  j^cr- 
fcclion      In  Imth   there   is  the  same  isolation, 
the  Kime  pride  of   intellect,  and  contempt  for 
c)rdinar>'  men.     In  Iwth,  the  supremacy  of  love 
over  knovlcdge  or  contemplation  is  proved  at  the 
end.    But  in  Paracelsus  there  is  a  'voblcr  ideal: 
the  godlike  knowledge  he  seeks  is  m.t  for  himself, 
but  "  to  elevate  the  race  at  once."    The  Sanyasi's 
desire  is  more  egoistic.    Paracelsus,  dying,  thinks 
of  the  race  of  his  fellow-beings  and  their  de- 
liverance; the  Sanyasi  struggles  with  only  the 
one  aHection,  evoked  by  "a  lovely  child  of  na- 
ture" that  stirs  his  fatherly  instinct.     It  is  an 
individual  emotion,  and  the  solace  it  lm)ks  for 
is  a  medicine  fo*-  the  creature-self  and  the  de- 
frauded and  mortified  ego. 

In  Nature's  Revenge,  then,  we  have  appar- 
ently the  first  sign  of  its  writer's  second  develop- 
ment, in  which  he  advanced  out  of  the  stage 
of  yor.thful  desire  and  entered  upon  "the  fair 
field  full  of  folk"  and  those  aspects  of  life  to 
e.xprcss  which  a  poet  must  seek  dramatic  as 
well  as  lyric  modes  of  art. 


*■    •  -i." 


r.TTr:'!8KflQ;iimi?«^)«nahr.^i^  i; 


A  •■.1*/. 


84 


R/VBINDRANATII  TAGORE 


fH. 


»■ 


:!■ 


11: 


r  1 


Compared  with   Prakritira  Pratisodlia,  Ctitra 
is  like  a  piece  of  sculpture  set  beside  a  sombre 
strangely-coloured  painting.     Chitra  is  in  effect 
a  lyric  drama,  based  on  the  story  of  a  king's 
daughter    of    that    name    told    in    Makabarota. 
Chitra's  father  has  no  son,  and  he  has  trained 
his  daughter  not  as  a  girl,  but  as  a  boy,  and 
made  her  his  heir.     In  the  opening  scene  we 
find  her  conferring  with  the  two  gods,  Madana 
(who  is  EiDs)   and  Vasanta   (who   is  L>'coris). 
She  tells  them  how  one  day  when  wandering 
along   the  river-bank  on   the  track  of  a  deer, 
she  came  on  a  man  lying  under  the  trees  on  a 
bed  of  dried  leaves.    This  proved  to  be  Arjuna, 
the  hero  of  his  great  race,  who  had  long  been 
the  idol  of  her  dreams.     She  knew  that  he  had 
vowed  to  live  a  hermit's  life  for  twelve  years, 
and  she  had  often  wished,  as  a  warrior-maiden, 
to  meet  him  in  her  male  disguise  and  challenge 
hun   to   single   combat.     But  now   at  sight  of 
him  she  is  overtaken,  as  it  were,  by  "a  whirl- 
wind of  thought";  she  stands  without  a  word 
of  greeting  or  courtesy  as  he  walks  away.    Next 
morning  she  lays  aside  her  man's  clolliuig  and 
puts  on  bracelets  and  anklcls  and  a  gown  of 
purple-red   silk    and    a    waist-chain,    and     with 


vn 


THE  PLAYWRIGHT 


8S 


a  shrinking  at  her  heart,  hastens  to  seek  Arjuna 
in  the  forest  temple  of  Shiva.  There  he  re- 
minds her  of  his  vow;  hence  it  is  that  in  despair 
of  winning  his  love,  she  turns  to  the  God  of 
Love.  Madana  promises  to  bring  the  world- 
conquering  Arjuna  to  her  feet;  and  she  craves 
from  Vasanta,  god  of  youth,  one  day  of  perfect 
womanly  grace  in  which  she  shall  lose  her  plain 
looks  and  boyish  features. 

"For  a  single  day,"  she  says,  "m.'ke  me  su- 
perbly beautiful.  .  .  .  Give  me  one  brief  day 
of  perfect  beauty." 

There  is  the  transcendent  note  that  is  never 
far  away  in  this  imaginer's  music.     Compare 
the  unfolding  of  the  love  idyll  that  foUowj  with 
the    stern    drama   of    love's   scourging,   told  in 
The  King  of  the  Dark  Chamber.     In  both  the 
supernal  powers  come  into  play  across  the  de- 
sires of  men  and  women  who  think  to  win  love, 
and  find  it  bound  by  immutable  law.    In  both 
a  motive  of  fate,  in  the  quest  of  supernal  beauty 
and  loveliness,  is  used  to  evoke  the  central  idea  of 
the  drama.    But  in  one  the  woman  craves  beauty 
for  herself;  in  the  other  her  desire  is  to  find  it  in 
the  forbidding   face  and  the  dark  chamber  of 
her  dreadful  lord  and  king. 


86 


RABINDRANATH  TAGORE  ch. 


U'l   i 


One  passage  from  the  latter  play,  where  the 
truth  begins  to  penetrate  the  Queen's  simplicity, 
will  indicate  the  death  motive: 

Sudarshana 

How  can  you  say  that  I  shall  be  unable  to  bear  your  sight? 
Oh.  I  can  feel  even  in  this  dark  how  lovely  and  wonderful 
you  are:  why  should  I  be  afraid  of  you  in  the  light?  But  tell 
me,  can  you  see  me  in  the  dark? 


Yes,  I  can. 


What  do  you  see? 


King 


Sudarshana 


King 


1  see  that  the  darkness  of  the  infinite  heavens,  whirled 
into  life  and  being  by  the  power  of  my  love,  has  drawn  the 
light  of  a  myriad  stars  into  itself,  and  incarnated  itself  in  a 
form  of  flesh  and  blood.  .  .  . 

She  cannot  understand  the  mystery  of  the 
darkness  that  is  not  dark  to  the  vision  of  this 
inscrutable  lord  of  love  and  life-in-dea,th.  It 
is  equally  wonderful  that  he  can  see  in  her, 
Sudarshana,  what  he  does.  She  asks  him  if 
slie  is  really  as  he  says— "so  wonderful,  so  beauti- 
ful"—for  she  cannot  find  these  qualities  in  her- 
self. The  King  replies  that  not  even  her  own 
mirror    can    reflect    them.      "Could    you    only 


vn 


THE  PLAYWRIGHT 


87 


see  yourself,"  he  says,  "mirrored  in  my  own 
mind."     She  begs  him,  then,  to  show  her  how 
to  see  with  his  eyes;  "Is  there  nothing  at  all 
like  darkness  to  you?     This  darkness— '  which 
is  to  me  real  as  death'— is  it  nothing  to  you? 
I  want  to  see  you  where  I  see  trees  and  animals, 
birds   and   stones,   and   the   earth.  .  .  ."     The 
King  says  she  may  look  for  him  from  the  palace 
turret  among  the  crowd  this  very  night,  during 
the  festival  of  the  full  moon  of  the  spring.    The 
song  of  the  revellers  and  festive  singing  boys 
in  the  next  scene  fills  Sudarshana  with  appre- 
hension;  she  dreams  of   love   unfulfillable   and 
unrequited: 

My  sorrow  is  sweet  to  me  in  this  spring  night. 

My  pain  smiles  at  the  chords  of  my  love  and  softly  sings. 

The  smells  from  the  depths  of  the  woodland  have  lost  their 
way  in  my  dreams. 
Words  come  in  whispers  to  my  ears,  I  know  not  from  where. 

i\,\d  she  says  as  the  song  ends,  "A  fancy 
comes  to  me  tnat  desire  can  never  attain  its 
object— it  need  never  attain  it." 

She  learns  the  truth  that  love  is  stem  and 
based  on  the  unalterable  law,  from  Surangama, 
who  has  been  the  King's  s-^rvant,  and  who  is 


1 


■  i 


fiii 

'tli  I  w 


88 


RABINDRANATH  TAGORE 


CH. 


the  interpreter  of  the  Dark  Chamber;  a  chorus- 
damsel  who  sings  in  sharp  antiphon  to  the  com- 
mon chorus  of  secular  kings  and  king- worshippers: 

Surangama 
Every  one  knows  that  the  King  is  hard  and  pitiless — no 
one  has  ever  been  able  to  move  him. 

Sudarshana 
Why  do  you,  then,  cull  on  him  day  and  night? 

To  which  Surangama  answers,  "May  he  ever 
remain  hard  and  re'  -tless."  Her  temper  is 
like  that  of  the  singer  >vho  delights  in  the  fierce- 
ness of  the  Maruts  and  sings  the  hymn  of  their 
coming: 

Come  higher,  Maruts,  on  your  chariots  charged  with  light- 
ning, resounding  with  beautiful  songs,  stored  with  spears,  and 
winged  with  horses!  Fly  to  us  like  birds  brnging  food,  you 
mighty  ones! 

They  come  gloriously  on  their  red  or  their  tawny  horses 
which  hasten  their  chariots.  He  who  holds  the  axe  is  brilliant 
like  gold— with  the  tyre  of  the  chariot  they  have  struck  the 
earth. 

On  your  bodies  there  are  daggers  for  beauty;  may  they 
stir  up  our  minds  as  they  itir  up  the  forests. 

The  motive  worked  out  in  *he  dramatic  par- 
able of  the  Dark  Chamber  is  one  that  bears 
significantly,  as  we  shall  see  when  we  turn  to 


vu 


THE  PLAYWRIGHT 


89 


Sddhand,  on  that  idea  of  the  dcHverance  from 
the  circle  of  imperfections  and  the  lower  sense, 
which  is  behind  the  whole  doctrine  of  Brahma. 
It   is   one   of    the   elements    in    Rabindranath's 
poetr>',  whether  dramatic  or  lyric  in  form,  which 
help  to  make  his  pages  more  humanly  interest- 
ing—that he  expresses  there  so  freely  the  ideal 
history  of  his  own  spiritual  pilgrimage.     He  is 
the  tenderest  of  lovers,  the  fondest  idolater  of 
a  small  chUd,  the  happiest  dreamer,  that  ever 
walked  under  the  moon:  yet  he  is  a  stoic  who 
knows  very  well  what  the  terrors  of  Siva  mean, 
and  what  exceeding  darkness  that  is  in  the  sun, 
on  which  its  bright  light  rests.     But  when  a 
man  writes  the  drama  of  himself,  he  always  tends 
to  be  lyrical;  and  both  in  Chitra  and  The  King 
of  the  Dark  Chamber  the  play  does  seem  to  be 
looking  at  every  turn  for  its  lyric  moment  and 
for  a   solution   which   transcends   the   common 
office  of  the  stage. 

The  dramatic  critics  have  complained  over 
this  tendency  in  Indian  playwrights,  as  if  in 
great  drama,  in  ^schylus,  in  Sophocles,  in 
Shakespeare,  in  Goethe's  Faust,  there  was  not 
any  attempt  to  find  lyrical  alleviation  on  the 
road  to  the  dramatic  climax.     Moreover,   the 


•:V- 


90 


ILVBINDRANATH  TAGORE      ch.  vn 


f     ! 

»■    ." 

I 
I 


M 
III 


east  has  fostered  a  drama  of  its  own,  congenially 
influenced  by  the  musical  affinity  of  its  themes. 
It  docs  not,  like  our  English  stage,  look  for  the 
comedy  of  diilerences  or  the  sheer  tragedy  of 
circumstance.     The  old-style  Indian  playwright 
set  out  with  a  clear  subject— say,  the  pursuit 
of  beauty  by  the  ordained  lover,  or  the  quest 
of  the  Golden  Stag.    There  might  be  a  few  comic 
episodes  by  the  way,  but  they  were  only  for 
relief,  a  diversion,  not  a  development,  of  the  real 
argument.     We  have  to  reckon  bolh  with  the 
tradition  of  a  stage,  as  well  as  the  temperament 
of  a  playwright  in  judging  a  kind  of  drama  so 
new   to  us.     Rabindranath  Tagcre  may  break 
the  rules  of  our  common  stage-practice,  but  he 
breaks  none  that  govern  the  leisurely  drama  of 
the  open  air  and  the  courtyard,  which  he  and 
his  fellow-playw  rights  in  India  have  in  mind. 


['■•■■ 


i^f^^vv;.  ■'■ 


CHAPTER  VIII 

"gitanjali"  and  ciiaitanya  deva 

That  sky  there  alwve  us,  O  Zanithustra,  seen  from  afar 
looks  like  a  pauice  built  of  heavenly  substance  an<l  shining 
over  the  earth;  it  is  like  a  garment  inlaid  with  stars. 

A  BOOK  of  song  whose  pages  arc  tinged  with  a 
light  like  the  sky  shown  to  Zarathustra,  it  was 
Gitanjali  that  won  for  its  author  his  audience 
over  here,  and  we  still  return  to  it  as  to  a  first 
love.    Innocent,  most  of  us,  of  what  lay  behind  it 
in   Indian   poetry,    we    found    in    these    "song- 
offerings,"  as  the  title  is  in  English,  an  accent 
that  was  new  to  us,  yet  natural  as  our  own  hopes 
and  fears.    They  took  up  our  half-formed  wishes 
and  gave  them  a  voice;  they  rose  inevitably  from 
the  life,  the  imagination,  and  the  desires  of  him 
who  wrote.     They  were  the  vehicle  of  a  great 
emotion  that  surprised  its  imagery  not  only  in 
the  light  that  was  like  music,  the  rhythm  that 
was  in  the  waves  of  sound  itself  and  the  light- 
waves of  the  sun;  but  in  the  rain,  the  wet  road, 
the  lonely  house,  the  great  wall  that  stuts  in 

91 


i 


f- ) 


1 1 


i 
1 


il  -! 


92  RABINDRANATH  TAGORE  en. 

the  rrcaturc-sclf,  the  shroud  of  dust,  the  night 
black  as  a  black -stone. 

It  was  an  emotion  so  sure  of   itself  that   it 
made  no  effort  after  novelty  or  originality,  but 
took  the  things  that  occur  to  us  all,  and  dvyelt 
upon  them,  and  made  them  alive,  and  musical 
and  significant.    Their  effect  on  those  who  read 
them  was  curious;  one  famous  English  critic  ex- 
pressed this  effect  half  humorously  when  he  said: 
"I  have  met  several  people,  not  easily  impressed, 
who  could   not   read   that  book  without   tears. 
As  for  me,  I  read  a  few  pages  and  then  put  it 
dowr,  feeUng  it  to  be  too  good  for  mc.     The 
rest  of  it  I  mean  to  read  in  the  n^xt  world.  .  .  ." 
To  explain  the  true  incidence  of  song  is  always 
lost  endeavour.     All  one  can  do  is  to  say  the 
lyric  fire  is  there  for  those  who  can  and  care  to 
receive  it;  and  for  the  others,  of  what  use  to 
try  to  convince  them?    You  cannot  force  a  reader 
to  like  Shelley,  or  understand  the  innocence  of 
Blake,   any   more   than  you  can  make  an  un- 
musical ear  delight  in  "Adcryn  Pur"  or  the  orig- 
inal air  of ''  Lhudc  sing  Cuccu." 

The  wonder  is  that  a  poet  born  abroad  with 
another  mother-*  3ngue  than  ours  should  have 
been  able  to  use  English  with  so  sure  and  spon- 


vm 


"GITANJALI" 


93 


taneous  a  fiulcncc.  Indeed  the  retapturo  or 
recreation  of  the  original  .spirit  in  the  ICn^lish 
paRc  suq>  sses  anything  else  that  we  have  seen 
in  Oriental  verse,  since  FitzClerald  metamor- 
phosed Omar  Khay>'am.  So  much  so,  that  it 
has  even  been  rumoured  by  sceptical  critics  in 
India  that  GHaiijali  was  in  the  process  indel)te(l 
to  an  I'.nglish  ghost;  and  the  name  of  Mr.  W.  B. 
Yeats  has  been  particularly  associated  with  this 
mysterious  otTice,  thanks,  it  may  be,  to  his  known 
uncanny  powers.  It  may  be  as  well  to  say,  then, 
that  the  small  manuscript  book  in  which  the 
author  made  these  new  ICnglish  versions  when 
he  was  on  his  way  here  in  1912,  is  still  in  the 
possession  of  Mr.  Will  Uothenstein;  and  any  one 
who  takes  the  trouble  to  compare  the  pocket 
book  with  the  printed  text  will  find  that  the 
variations  are  of  the  slightest,  while  in  cer- 
tam  instances  the  printed  readings  may  be 
criticised  as  not  an  improvement  on  those  in 
the  MS. 

Rabindranath  Tagore,  in  fact,  as  you  have 
heard,  not  only  learnt  English  at  home,  but 
came  to  England  when  he  was  a  student  of 
seventeen,  with  a  keen  curiosity  about  western 
poetry  and  the  finer  usage  of  the  tongue  that 


94 


K ABIXDRAXATII  TAGORK 


rii. 


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K 


has  IxHoinc  the  liitnua  franca  of  cast  and  west. 
\()  one  who  at  any  time  (Hstussed  with  him 
matters  of  style,  and  the  business  of  verse  and 
prose,  could  mistake  his  fceUng  for  Knglisli, 
although  he  often  confessed  to  a  fear  that  some- 
thing of  its  ease  and  finesse  of  style  escai>ed 
him.  You  ha\e  only  to  mark  the  dilTerence  in 
quality  between  the  translation  of  Gitanjali,  which 
he  did  himself,  and  that  of  The  King  of  the 
Dark  Chamber  (wliich  in  the  edition  first  issued, 
despite  the  e\i(lcnce  of  the  title-page,  is  by  an- 
other hand),  to  appreciate  how  delicate  is  his 
own  touch  and  his  feeling  for  the  salient  phrase 
and  the  live  word.  It  is  of  a  part  with  this  under- 
standing of  our  common  medium,  that  we  should 
find  in  his  poetry  a  spiri  more  congenial  to 
ourselves  than  that  we  usually  find  in  Oriental 
verse.  Our  English  notion  of  Indian  poetry,  espe- 
cially when  tinged  as  these  songs  are  with  re- 
ligious ardour,  is  that  it  lies  too  far  aloof  from 
uur  hopes  and  fears  to  pass  the  test  of  our  own 
art.  But  what  strikes  one  in  reading  Gitanjali 
is  that  the  heavenly  desire  is  (jualified  by  an  al- 
most childlike  reliance  on  the  alTections,  and 
at  times  by  an  almost  womanly  tenderness. 
Its  pages  carry  on  an  old  tradition,  yet  strike 


Mil 


"GITANJALl" 


95 


the  new  emotion  of  a  r.arc,  In  a  mode  that  is  very 
real,  with  all  its  ideality.  Combine  these  two 
things,  and  you  have  solved  what  is  one  of  the 
problems  of  the  lyric  |KX!t  who  must  use  the 
large  language  of  all  j)oetr>',  yet  atlai>t  it  with 
an  inllexion  of  his  own  t<>  the  particular  needs 
of  his  own  time  and  his  own  temperament.  In 
the  second  page  of  Gilanjali  he  gives  us  the 
key  to  his  melody  and  to  its  control  of  the  two 
elements  when  he  makes  his  confession: 


II 


When  thou  commamlesl  mc  to  sins;  it  seems  th.it  my  heart 
wiivtid  bleak  with  pride;  and  I  lo«k  to  thy  face  and  tears  come 
to  my  eyes. 

.All  that  is  harsh  and  dissonant  in  my  life  melts  into  one 
i^wcct  harmony,  and  my  adoration  spreads  wings  like  a  glad 
bird  on  its  flight  across  the  sea. 

To  England  the  great  waves  of  poetry  have 
often  flowed  from  the  regions  of  the  sun.  From 
Greece  came  an  impulse  that  died  down  only 
to  revive,  and  that  went  on  for  centuries.  From 
Italy  came  a  rcin.spiration  that  aflfccted  ("Iiaucer, 
touched  the  Elizabethans,  and  helped  to  furnish 
Shelley  with  his  vision  of  nature  transcendent, 
fulfilled  with  southern  light  and  sunshine.  From 
Provence,  again,  came  irresistible  romance  and 
lyric  melody.    And  now,  perhaps,  it  may  prove 


96 


RABIXDRANA'III  TACJORK 


en. 


i 


I 


ir 


to  Iw  the  vision  of  India  from  wlii<  h  wc  arc  to 
get  a  frcshtT  scnsi'  of  nature  and  life  and  that 
corresiKindeiue  of  earth  and  heaven  whose  jK-'r- 
ccption  inspires  the  i)oet's  »'('stasy: 

L(t  all  {'■  •  strains  of  joy  niinKl'-  i"  ">>'  I.!"*'  JwinR  The  joy 
thill  mil  'ho  I'.trth  How  nvi  r  in  the  tiutous  txicsH  o(  iho 
gra-^-i,  the  j»)y  lh.it  vts  thr  twin  liroilurs,  lift-  and  <ltaih, 
«latuiti»j  over  the  wi.lf  woriti,  thi-  joy  th.it  swtqiH  in  with  the 
titn|u,t,  nhakiiu:  ati.l  wakin«  all  lili'  with  l.iiij?htiT,  the  joy 
thai  siu  -ilill  witli  ili  ttars  on  thf  ci|M*n  r»<l  lotus  of  pain,  and 
the  joy  that  throws  everything  it  has  ui>on  the  <lusl,  and  knows 
not  a  word. 

This  is  the  lyric  counterpart  of  the  pages 
in  SdilhafHi  that  expound  the  gosjK'l  of  the  flower, 
the  messenger  whose  form  and  fragrance  de- 
clare that  "from  the  everlasting  joy  all  things 
have  t.-ir  bit  lit."  And  in  the  innocence  of 
beauty,  which  is  transparent  to  the  light  of  the 
sun,  it  helps  to  dissipate  the  shadow  of  Muyil, 
and  to  repair  the  cleavage  of  illusion. 

We  are  like  Si  la  in  Havana's  tiolden  City,  in 
exile,  amid  all  its  worldly  pomp  and  sens^ition; 
and  then  a  .song,  a  flower,  or  a  beam  of  light, 
comes  with  a  message  from  ihe  other  world, 
and  says  the  \.ords:  "I  am  come.  He  has  sent 
me.  I  am  a  messenger  of  the  beautiful;  the 
one  whose  soul  is  the  bliss  of  love.  ...     He  will 


(3ii4 


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I  roi.RAPH    P>      :..         CllTASJvLl"    BtNo\Ll    TtXT. 


^.Sa-w^i 


VUI 


a 


GITANJALI" 


97 


draw  tLcc  to  him,  and  make  thee  his  own.    This 
illusion  will  not  hold  thee  in  thraldom  for  over." 
If    The  Gardener  is   the   song-book   of   youth 
and  the  romance  of  the  young  lover  who  is  satis- 
f.ed  with  a  flower  for  itself,  or  for  its  token  of 
love's  hapi)iness,   to  be  realised  on  earth  in  a 
day  or  night,  Gitanjali  is  the  book  of  the  old 
lover  who  is  in  love  with  heavenly  desire.     He 
cannot  be  satisfied,  but  must  always  wish   to 
transcend  life  and  sensation  through  death,  and 
attain  not  Nircana  in  the  sense  of  extinction,  but 
Brahma  Vihara,  the  joy  eternal,  the  realisation 
of  love  in  its  last  abode: 

Thou  art  the  sky,  and  thou  art  the  nest  as  well.  Oh,  thou 
beautiful,  there  in  the  nest  it  i.  thy  love  that  encloses  the  soul 
with  colours  and  sounds  ;in<l  odours. 

There  comes  tlu?  Hiorning  with  the  golden  basket  in  her 
right  hand,  bearing  the  wr.:ath  of  beauty,  silently  to  crown 

the  earth.  ,      ,       ,  , 

And  there  comes  the  evening  over  the  lonely  meadows 
deserted  by  herds,  through  trackless  paths,  carrying  cool 
draughts  of  peace  in  her  golden  pitcher  from  the  western 

ocean  of  rest. 

But  there,  where  spreads  the  infinite  sky  for  the  soul  to 
take  her  flight  in,  reigns  the  stainless  white  radiance.  There 
is  no  day  nor  night,  nor  form,  nor  colour,  and  never  never  a 
word. 

Those   who   have   heard   any  of   these   songs 
sung  to  their  original  tunes,  or  ragas  will,  as  has 


r:  • 


t   '■ 


I 


;l     t 


^     I' 


98 


RiVBINDRANATH  TAGOllE 


CH. 


been  said,  still  fancy  they  hear  in  the  English 
medium  some  echo  of  that  wilder  rhythm.  In- 
deed it  seems  at  times  as  though  the  poet  had 
imprisoned  the  very  trace  of  that  dual  melody 
in  the  EngHsh  words:  the  two  musics  are  there, 
as  they  only  exist  in  true  poetr}',  whether  it  be 
verse  to  be  sung  or  not. 

Of  the  nature  of  Indian  music  itself,  and 
the  aid  it  is  able  to  give  to  Indian  verse,  it  needs 
an  expert  to  speak.  Mr.  Fox  Strangways  has 
gi^•'2n  us,  through  the  Indian  Society,  a  remark- 
able account  of  it  in  his  book,  The  Music  of 
Hindostan,  which  n-akcs  us  understand  that 
the  difference  between  it  and  our  own  music  is 
as  wide  almost  as  that  between  the  languages. 
The  only  experience  that  one  can  recall  in  this 
country  which  gives  any  notion  of  Indian  raga- 
singing  is  that  to  be  gained  at  the  Welsh  Eistedd- 
fod, when  the  pcnnillion  singer  is  improvising 
(or  appears  to  be  improvising)  stanzas  to  the 
given  tune.  We  may  say,  too,  that  the  only 
effects  in  our  western  music  which  offer  any  sug- 
gestion of  some  of  those  strange  Indian  tunes 
with  their  half-tones,  wailing  and  beseeching 
phrases,  and  unexpected  sequences  is  to  be  had 
HI  some  of  the  older  Celtic  melody  such  as  we 


4i 


VIII 


"GITANJALI 


99 


find  it   in  certain   Gaelic   songs,   and   here  and 
there  in  a  snatch  of  Welsh  folk-s.)ng.     But  In- 
dian music  is  both  mo-     independent  and  less 
obvious  than  ours.    It  is  as  if  one  heard  the  wind 
sighing  and  the  stream  running  and  occasionally 
the  storm  shrieking— for  the  music  can  be  harsh 
and   strident,    too— behind    the   words.      As   for 
Rabindranath's    own    music,    Mr.    Fox    Strang- 
ways  has  told  us  that  to  hear  him  sing  his  songs 
is  to  realise  the  music  in  a  way  that  a  foreigner 
is  very  seldom  able  to  do.     "The  notes  of  the 
song  are  no  longer  their  mere  selves,  but  the 
vehicle  of  a  personality,  and  as  such  they  go 
behind    this  or   that   system   of   music   to   that 
beauty  of  sound  which  all  systems  put  out  their 
hands  to  sci  -•     These  melodies  are  such  as  would 
have  satisfied  riato."    And  W.  B.  Yeats,  envy- 
ing the  coi-ditions  which  could  foster  such  art, 
says:    " Rabindranath   Tagore   writes   music   for 
his  words,  and  one  understands  that  he  is  so 
abundant,  so  spontaneous,  so  daring  in  his  pas- 
sion, so  full  of  surprise,  because  he  is  doing  some- 
thing which  never  seem?  strange,  unnatural,  or 
in  need  of  defence." 

He  writes,  in  fact,  with  faith  in  his  audience 
and  m  its  cordial  delight  in  what  he  sings;  his 


i  j| 

I  ^ 


lOO 


P      INDRANATH  TAGORE 


CH. 


ill 


{., 


't^^ 


I 


music  flows  freely  berausc  there  are  eager  lis- 
teners waiting  to  accept  and  to  rejoice  in  his 
song;  and  this  we  discover,  as  we  look  back 
into  the  history  of  Bengali  literature,  comes  of 
the  propitious  custom  of  the  country. 

We  must  go  back  a  long  way,  to  a  time  be- 
tween Chaucer  and  Shakespeare,  to  realise  the 
true   anticipator   of   GildHJali   in    the   figure   of 
Nimai,   otherwise  called   Chaitanya   Deva.     He 
lived  at  one  time  not  far  from  Bolpur,  where 
Rabindranath   Tagore  has  his  home.     No  one 
could  have  told  in  Nimai's  boyhood  that  he  was 
to  grow  up  into  a  poet;  for  he  was  the  incor- 
rigible imp  of  his  village,  with  a  dash  in  him  of 
that  uncanny  prescience  which  sometimes  exists 
in  the  fool  of  nature  and  the  son  of  the  wild. 
When   the   pious   Brahmins,   after   their   sacred 
bath,  closed  their  eyes  and  prayed  before  the 
small  figures  of  their  gods,  Nimai  would  creep  up 
stealthily  and  carry  off  their  images;  or  he  would 
collect  the  thorny  seeds  of  the  Okra  plant  and 
scatter  them  on  the  flowing  hair  of  the  little  girls 
that  went  to  bathe.     Again  he  would  shock  his 
parents  by  stepping  in  among  the  tabooed  and 
forbidden    things    which    a    Brahmin    must   not 
touch;  and,  when  they  admonished  liim_j  his  reply 


vm 


"GITANJALI" 


101 


was:  "If  you  will  not  let  me  study  these  things, 
how  am  I  to  know  what  is  clean  and  what  un- 
clean? "—words  fraught,  as  his  biographer  says, 
with  the  deepest  truths  of  Vedantic  teaching. 

T''e  same  energy  that  made  Nimai  a  tor- 
ment to  his  own  folk  made  him  throw  himself 
into  his  school  tusks  and  the  study  of  Sanskrit 
\vith  a  kind  of  fur>'.  He  had  soon  learnt  enough 
to  tease  and  puzzle  his  masters  and  make  fun 
of  them  and  their  pedantry.  He  could  not  re- 
strain his  wit;  he  was  incorrigible  in  his  wild  and 
roguish  exploits.  At  twenty  he  set  up  a  Tol, 
or  Sanskrit  school,  and  pupils,  good  and  bad, 
flocked  to  his  feet;  for  he  was  a  bom  teacher, 
knomng  in  himself  how  the  tough  fibres  of  the 
rebel  mind  can  best  be  humoured.  He  was  at 
this  stage  still  very  godless;  some  would  say 
excess  of  imagination  made  him  sceptical.  "His 
mind  was  as  clear  as  the  sky,  and  his  tempera- 
ment like  the  sweet-scented  cephalika  flower." 
It  attracted  all  those  who  came  near  him  in  spite 
of  his  teasing,  tantalising  spirit. 

Before  he  settled  down,  Nimai  made  a  tour 
of  the  seats  of  learning  in  Bengal,  \vhere  his 
Sanskrit  grammar,  young  grammarian  as  he 
was,   had   abready   become   the  accepted   book. 


y-v  ■  -/j. 


.V.-:«- 


t-4 
■  t 


I02 


R.\BINDRANATH  TAGORE 


ca. 


We  find  him  returning  home,  full  of  honours, 
after  many   months,   and   catching  a  delighted 
first  glimpse  of  the  place  girdled  by  the  Ganges, 
its  temples  rising  above  the  tree-tops.     He  had 
married  before  he  left  home;  and  now,  ^^  some 
friends  met  him  half-way  and  with  a  touch  of 
his  old  mischief  he  mimicked  for  them  the  ac- 
cent   of    East    Bengal,    they    disappeared    mys- 
teriously when  he  got  near  his  mother's  door. 
On  reaching  it,  he  found  her  in  tears,  and  learnt 
that  his  young  wife,  LaksmI,  was  dead  from  a 
snake-bite.     Therewith  began  the  great  change 
that  came  over  him.    He  was  still  only  twenty-one 
years  old,  but  the  gaiety  of  his  youth  Lad  gone. 

We  hear  of  him  then  at  the  great  temple  of 
Gaya,  bringing  his  offerings  to  the  lotus-feet 
of  Vishnu,  where  the  Pandas  sang,  "These  feet, 
O  pilgrims,  lead  to  heaven.  From  these  feet 
flows  the  sacred  stream  of  the  Ganges.  The 
great  saints  in  their  vision  desire  to  catch  a 
glimpse  of  these  feet.  Their  glory  is  sung  by 
the  god  Siva  and  are  made  into  divine  music  by 
Narada.  They  lead  to  heaven,  these  divine  feet. 
Iliere  is  no  other  way." 

Nimai  appeared  to  be  listening  to  the  song, 
but  in  fact  heard  nothing,  for  ho  had  fallen  into 


vm 


"GIT.\NJ.\Lr' 


103 


a  trance,  and  when  he  came  to  himself  the  tears 
flowed  tlown  liis  cheeks  as  he  told  his  friends 
to  leave  him. 

"I  am  no  lontjcr  fit  for  the  world,"  he  said, 
"I  must  go  to  the  sacred  groves  to  find  out 
Krishna,  my  Lord,  and  the  Lord  of  the  Uni- 
verse." 

From  this  time  the  name  of  Krishna  becomes 
the  refrain  to  all  his  invocations  and  songs  of 
ecstasy.  Sometimes  for  whole  nights  together 
he  and  his  little  circle  of  followers  would  go  on 
singing  while  his  face  shone  and  liis  eyes  gleamed 
like  two  stars. 

So  great,  says  Mr.  D.  C.  Sen,  was  the  attrac- 
tion of  the  personality  of  Nmiai  that  some- 
times for  a  whole  night  the  people  sang  around 
him  unmindful  of  the  passing  of  the  hours,  and 
when  the  early  dawn  came  they  would  look 
wonderingly  at  the  sun,  thinking  he  had  ap- 
peared too  soon.  Once  at  Gurjari,  when  end- 
ing a  discourse  to  the  crowd,  he  cried  aloud: 
"O  God,  0  my  Krishna"— we  are  told  that 
the  place  where  he  stood  seemed  to  turn  into 
heaven.  A  delicious  breeze  blew  upon  the  people 
who  had  gathered  in  crowds  and  a  fragrance 
like  the  lotus  floated  from  him,  while  the  Ma- 


i 


^^i 


I       \{ot* 


:}r.a£.^M:m^:;^^iAiUii^'.^JM£ 


104 


RAB1NDRA.NATII  TAGORL 


cu. 


rA 


hi 


•9 
l 


\i 


•  '  rfe 


I  ;  »; 


harattas  of  noble  family  stcMwl  round  like  statues 
and  the  holy  men  li  icnc^'  tu  his  chanting  with 

closed  eyes. 

It  is  not  only  a  folk-tradition  that  shows  us 
the  man  being  made  into  a  myth;  we  have  the 
testimony  of  his  fellow-poets,  and  amvong  them 
Govinda  Das.    He  left  a  series  of  notes  of  Nimui's 
career,  which  have  the  advantage  of  giving  us 
real  impressions  without  any  attempt  to  make 
them  fit  into  a  saint's  life.     He  even  tells  us 
what  kind  of  food  was  to  be  had  in  Nimai's 
house  before  he   turned  ascetic.     All   kinds  of 
fruit  and  sweet  roots;  milk,  butter,  and  cream; 
delicious  salads  and  many  kinds  of  sweetmeats. 
"I,"  says  Govinda,  with  perfect  frankness,  "I, 
the  prince  of  gluttons,  became  a  willing  servant 
in  that  house."    But  the  change  came,  and  Nimui 
made  his  -,tirring  declaration:  "1  shall  have  my 
head   shaven,   cast  off   the   sacred   thread,   and 
wander    from    house    to    house,    picj^ching    the 
love  of  Krishna.    Young  men,  children,  old  men, 
worldly  men,  and  even  the  Pariahs  will  stand 
round  me  charmed  with  the  name  of  God." 

In  the  songs  of  Nimui  and  Govinda  Das, 
and  in  the  poetry  Chaitanya  inspired,  we  gain 
a  sense  of  a  country  and  a  people  wl  o  love  poetr>', 


h    :    #■ 


vm 


"GITANJ.UI" 


los 


and  in  a  way  live  by  it,  making  it  a  part  of  their 
daily  existence.  And  when  wo  try  to  under- 
stand somelhinK  <>f  the  fervour  and  naturalness 
and  spontaneous  melody  that  mark  The  Gardener 
and  Gitanjali,  we  see  what  they  gained  by  the 
love  of  song  and  the  belief  in  inspiration  fostered 
among  the  ik'oi)1c  of  Bengal.  Without  Chaitanya 
and  such  lives  as  the  "Chaitanya  Mangal," 
the  Bengal  poets  of  to-day  would  not  be  what 
they  are.  The  living  usage  of  the  art — the 
use  of  songs  actually  sung  and  declaimed,  not 
merely  read  in  the  book— has  remained  a  tradi- 
tion among  them,  and  made  poetry  not  only 
a  welcome,  but  an  inalienable  thing. 

The  author  of  Folksongs  from  the  Panjab 
quotes  a  saying  to  the  effect  that  music  is  bom 
in  Bengal,  grows  up  in  Oudh,  grows  old  in  the 
Panjab,  and  dies  in  Kashmir;  and  as  we  look 
into  the  records  of  the  various  Indian  tongues  and 
races,  we  discern  what  seems  to  be  the  working 
of  a  fmer  spirit  of  song  and  lyric  life  in  that 
region  of  the  Ganges  over  which  Nimai  wan- 
dered. If  there  is  a  congenial  folk-element  at 
work  which  saves  poetry  there  from  becoming 
a  victim  to  the  dark  distemper  which  verse 
must   always   dread,— begotten   in    the   literary 


w  %.  I  *ifm\f^iAsM^^\i^'.M^:kmmxm^mm 


r  « 


H 


S 

I- 


106 


R^VlilNDRAXATII  TA(;()RK      m  v.u 


schools  and  of  the  literary  habit,— there  is  some 
grace  Iim)  In  the  Bengali  tongue  which  makes 
of  it  a  rare  Instrument,  alike  free  from  the  aca- 
demic airs  of  Sanskrit  and  from  th*-  mixed  idiom 
of  the  l)ase  dialects. 

So  far  as  .m  ignorant  Western  reader  can 
learn,  Rabindranath  Tagore  has  l)ccn  able  in 
his  poems  and  other  writings  to  preserve  with 
uncommon  felicity  and  naturalness  of  olTect 
the  balance  between  the  Sanskrit  and  the  Ben- 
gali idioms.  He  has  the  instinctive  sense  which 
warns  him  otl  the  schoolman's  word  and  the 
intimidating  note  of  pedantry,  and  in  Gitaujali 
the  Bengali  tongue  has  been,  we  are  told,  car- 
ried to  its  most  forcible  and  melodious  pitch. 
It  has  the  quality  begotten  of  the  inh-.^ent  music 
of  a  tongue,  which  we  fmd  in  the  best  of  our 
Elizabethans,  who  wrote  with  a  true  regard  for 
the  spoken  word  and  its  clear  enunciation,  using 
all  those  associations  of  word  behind  word,  and 
thought  within  thought,  to  which  Coleridge  al- 
ludes in  a  famous  passage  of  the  Biographia. 


i*. 


CHAPTER  IX 

A   SPIRITUAL  COMMONVVI  ALTH 

C.otl.  the  Great  Ciivcr,  can  o|>cn  the  whole  univers*'  to  our 
g.izc  ill  the  narrow  space  of  a.  single  Una.—Jivan-smitri,  Rabin - 
DkANAiu  Taourk. 

In  Shanti  Niketan  wc  shall  see  how  Rabin- 
dranalh  Tagore  has  sought  to  develop  the  idea 
of  a  House  of  Peace,  a  boys'  republic,  a  school- 
house  without  a  taskmaster,  to  serve  as  a  model 
to  young  India.  With  a  similar  desire  it  was 
that  he  followed  the  steps  of  his  father,  the 
Maharshi,  into  that  religious  republic  which, 
to  a  western  eye,  looks  at  first  like  the  gather- 
ing up  of  the  ideals  of  Brahmanism  and  Chris- 
tianity into  a  common  fold.  We  need  remind- 
ing perhaps  that  the  India  in  which  Ram  Mohun 
Roy  set  up  the  Brahmo  Samaj  was  not  quite 
the  India  wc  know  now,  and  that  in  1S41,  when 
Devendranath  Tagore  joined  the  movement,  the 
current  Brahminism  was  still  deeply  tinged  with 
idolatr>-.  Even  now  all  the  ages  of  India's  re- 
ligious histoF}',  from  first  to  last,  are  represented 

107 


ftj-'\-^v 


':*r;Ki.f  ■'^-.  'liW^c'  ^r'^^k'jf^yr--^-^/T.\^: 


RABINDRANATH  TACiORi;  cu. 

in  Bengal  and  <>thcr  provlrurs.  Tho  strange 
cult  of  Siva  Mill  g'Hs  i^n,  aItlu.ti-!»  il  I^  remark- 
able that  what  wa^  utK f  only  a  k"<1  "^  <lestruc- 
tion,  who  might  have  been  invoketl  in  Euroix- 
(luring  thin  year  of  war,  has  been  transformed. 
Siva,  whose  four  arms  used  to  wield  deadly 
weainms,  has  been  ehanged  by  the  I'urunas  into 

a  calm,  serene  and  beautiful  deity  ",  ami  Kailu.sa, 
his  eily,  has  become  the  i)n.vcrl)ial  abode  of 
hai)i)iness.  Xexerlheless,  the  other  Siva  sur- 
vives, and  the  people  in  the  northern  provinces 
still  do  pKJa  to  the  elei>hant-iruiike(l  (ianesha 
and  the  monkey -god. 

We   western   people   are   viry    liahU    however 

to  mistake   the  si<rns  of   th«.i    i.nili.     Take   the 
description  of  thf    -rot'ot-.  <  ,  ^iv.i  bv  M.  Loti, 

in    which    the    si-nsaiion      i    the    overwhelming 

antiquity  of  th<    ea.^t,  ami    i.  ^:)len.i()ur.  terror, 

and   gloom   are    n  aliped     •  uii 

The  traveller  nj.  iies  GoU    nc 

of  a  town,"  from  ByderaLimi. 

which  give  access     o  a      12. ;> 

latabad,   anotbe-    Dnanu^rr    m: 

of  Babel,  is  pa-  .  d,  -iiu-  K  -.z...:- 

kind    of    sea — r(™Jl:      icru-.- 

scorched    to   san^   -uiu    sSiSt— d-ppesrs    ihcre   in 


,v<:  ;v:rn    a^■^(ilty. 
he    'pisantom 

litd  fis^-^es  gates 

gr^mic.   Dau- 

inliki    a  tower 

r  -e_^  ned.  and  a 

jns.     :)\imi    and 


1;  \ 


IX 


the 


SPIkiriAL  COMMONVVKALIH      «o<, 


\ITV 


(Tntrc  <»f   India.     Bt-yimd.  on  its  sad 
lif  iIrso  tt  rril)lc  (.ivis  of  IMlora,  nhiili 
he  rcaihcH  at  tiightfall,  and  willi      iinc  trouble 
I  he  finds  a  guide  with  whom  to  iKiiclraU'  the  ar- 


margm, 


lana. 

At  first  the  guide  hesitates;  but  they  det  ide 
to  enkr  a  vast  avenue,  with  ribbed  siden  and 
vault  faintly  ht  by  their  lantern,  suggesting 
the  vertel)ra'  d'nn  monslrc  tidf.  Passing  down 
the  ca\e,  whit  )i  has  the  j)n>i»(»rtiims  of  a  (iothic 
lathedral,  tli  v  « an  <Hmly  diseern  in  recesses 
the  upright  figuie>.  of  deiiii -^,  io  to  50  feet  in 
heigiit,  mi!liunles<i  and  eaini  in  ouiUnc.  But 
the  cave  enters  uiM)n  a  second  stage,  and  here 
the  guardian  deities  stand  out  of  tlie  ghnirny 
Vjaekground,  luntorted  in  every  expression  of 
agony  and  fur).  Ti>  add  to  the  terror,  a  babel 
is  aroused  of  birds  of  prey,  wti.jse  shrieks  resound 
through  the  k^ngth  of  tlie  Temple. 

When  issuing  under  the  open  sky  they  sec 
the  stars,  they  look  up  to  them  as  if  froni  an 
abyss,  and  realise  they  have  only  passed  tiie 
peristyle  of  the  Temple.  The  heart  of  the  moun- 
tain has  been  carvetl  out,  leaving  vast  granite 
walls  which  .spring   up   into   the   night,   terrace 

„ ,    I        ,,, •■%         f  .k*>*-'i  «-<rk  po  firof  I        lMt*»       rM.**"*!^"*;        Ill 


m\::Aiil^i^j  ^-.I'J 


no 


RABINDRANATH  TAGORE 


cu. 


I? 


Ill',* 


gods  eternally  at  battle,  that  seem  to  threaten 
the  explorers  at  ever>'  moment.  Their  way  is 
now  blocked  with  obelisks,  gigantic  carved  ele- 
phants, pylons  and  minor  temples,— forms  sug- 
gesHng  every  passion  of  terror  and  cruelty. 
And  Siva,  the  terrible  Siva,  the  procreator,  the 
slayer  with  many  hands  to  slay,  is  everywhere. 
In  the  heart  of  all  lies  the  ultimate  templt— a  great 
monolith  supported  upon  caryatid  elephants, 
unexpectedly  simple  and  restful  in  design.  The 
monoUth  contains  three  chambers,  the  last  of 
which  is  the  impenetrable  Brahmin  shrine.  Within 
its  simple  walls,  deep  in  the  soot  of  a  thousand 
incense-flames,  is  revealed  the  final  symbol  of 
the  faith  of  that  Siva  who  creates  only  to  de- 
stroy. 

For  a  companion  cartoon  to  that  of  the  grottoes 
of  EHora,  very  different  in  effect,  take  that  of 
Amritsa  painted  for  us  in  the  autobiography  of 
Devendranath  Tagore: 


I 


t^-i 


I 


I  went  to  Amritsar,  my  heart  set  on  that  lake  of  im- 
mortality, where  the  Sikhs  worship  the  Inscrutable  Im- 
mortal One.  Early  in  the  morning  I  hurried  through  the 
town  to  =e  tha*  holy  shrine  of  Amritsar.  After  ..-ander- 
ing  through  s: viral  s'  .-ets  I  asked  a  passer-by  at  last 
where  Amritsa.  was.    He  stared  at  me  in  surijrise  and 


%T> 


DC 


SPIRITUAL  COMMONWEALTH      in 


said,  "VVhy,  this  is  Amritsar."    "No,"  said  I,  "where  is 
that  Amritsar  where  God  is  worshipped  with  sacred  chant- 
ing?"   He  replied,  "The  Gurudwara?    Oh,  that  is  quite 
near;  go  this  way."     Taking  the  road  indicated,  and 
going  past  the  bazaar  of  red  cloth  shawls  and  scarves, 
I  saw  the  golden  spire  of  the  temple  shining  in  the  morn- 
ing sun.    Keeping  this  in  view,  I  arrived  at  the  temple, 
and  saw  a  big  tank  dug  here  by  Guru  Ramdas.    He  called 
it  Amritsar.    This  was  the  lake,  and  was  formeriy  called 
"Chak."    Like  an  islet  in  the  midst  of  the  lake  there  is 
a  white  marble  temple  which  I  entered  by  passing  over  a 
bridge.    In  front  there  was  a  huge  pile  of  books  covered 
over  with  a  parti-coloured  silk  cloth.    One  of  the  chief 
Sikhs  of  the  temple  was  waving  a  plume  over  it.    On  one 
side  singers  were  chanting  k^.A  the  sacred  books.    Pun- 
jabi men  and  women  came  and  walked  round  the  temple, 
and  having  made  their  salutations  with  offerings  of  shells 
and  flowers,  went  away— some  stayed  and  sang  with  de- 
votion.   Here  all  may  come  and  go  when  they  please— 
nobody  asks  them  to  come,  nobody  tells  them  not  to. 
Christians  and  IMahomedan*;,  all  may  come  here,  only 
according  to  the  rules  none  may  enter  the  bounds  of  the 
Gurudwara  with  shoes  on.  .  .  .     I  again  went  to  th: 
temple  in  the  evening,  and  saw  that  the  arati  or  vesper 
ceremony  was  being  performed.     A  Sikh  was  standing 
in  front  of  the  Books,  with  a  five-wick  lamp  in  hand, 
performing  the  arati.     All  the  other  Sikhs  stood  with 
joint-d  hands  repeating  with  him  in  solemn  tones: 

In  the  disc  of  the  sky 

The  Sim  and  moon  shine  as  lamps, 

The  galaxy  of  stars  twinkle  like  pearls, 

The  zephyr  is  incense,  the  winds  are  fanning, 


.5!     ' 


1 


XI2 


CIl. 


•14 


RABINDRANATH  TAGORE 

All  the  woods  arc  bright  with  flowers, 
Oh,  Saviour  of  the  worlil.  Thine  aniti 
Is  wonderful  indeed!    Loud  sounds  the  drum 
And  yet  no  hand  doth  beat. 


Now  we  can  realise  the  new  deliverance  for 
which  the  father  of  Rabindranath  worked,  be- 
queathing the  work  as  a  legacy  to  his  children, 
when  we  turn  to  the  faith  of  the  "  Brahmo  Samaj," 
which  he  founded  in  1843,  and  recall  the  pro- 
found feeling  with  which  he  spoke  of  his  reform: 
''During  my  travels,  how  often,"  he  said,  "have 
I  prayed  to  God  with  tears  in  my  eyes  for  the 
day  when  idolatrous  ceremonies  would  be  abol- 
ished from  our  house,  and  the  adoration  of  the 
Infinite  commence  in  their  stead." 

The  foundation  of  "Brahma  Dharma"  grew 
naturally  out  of  these  experiences  of  the  old 
Indian  religions,  but  the  basis  was  hard  to  find. 
WTien  he  began  to  think  of  his  new  rehgion  he 
felt  the  need  of  an  inspired  foundation  for  his 
beliefs.  First  he  went  to  the  Vedas,  but  found 
no  help  there.  Then  he  went  to  the  Upanishads, 
but  found  himself  face  to  face  with  a  hundred 
and  forty-seven  of  them,  preaching  most  con- 
trary doctrines.  It  seemed  eventually  any  and 
everybody  began  to  publish  anything  and  every- 


i  \   s- 


Ltf.  ■■0^mh 


% 


iHt  Place  wherf  thk  Grkat  :-a(,k  Maharshi  Divenuka  Nuh 

LSEU    TO    MEDITATE." 


\4  mi 


Iflt 

i 

^ 

i 

^t^^B  ^ 

M, 

'S^^^^ST 


IX 


SPIRITUAL  COMMONWEALTH      113 


t 


thing  doctrinal  under  the  name.  Even  the  eleven 
authentic  Upanishads  presented  many  contrary 
doctrines.    They,  like  the  Vedas,  were  given  up. 

These  Upanishads  could  not  meet  all  our  needs,  could 
not  fill  our  hearts.  Where  was  the  foundation  of  Brahmin- 
ism  to  be  law?  I  came  to  see  that  the  pure  heart,  filled 
with  the  light  of  intuitive  knowledge,  was  the  true  basis. 
Brahma  reigned  in  the  pure  heart  alone.  .  .  .  We  could 
accept  those  texts  only  of  tlie  Upanishads  which  accorded 
with  the  heart.  Those  sayings  which  disagreed  with  the 
heart  we  could  not  accept. 

.    In  one  Ui)ani5had  we  read : 

God  is  revealed  through  worship  to  the  heart  illumined  by 
an  intellect  free  from  all  doubt. 

To  the  soul  of  the  righteous  is  revealed  the  wisdom  of  God. 

These  words  accorded  with  the  experience  of  my  own  heart, 
hence  I  accepted  them. 

In  heaven  there  is  no  fear,  thou  art  not  there,  O  Death, 
neither  is  there  old  age.  Free  from  both  hanger  and  thirst, 
and  beyond  the  reach  of  sorro"',  all  rejoice  in  the  world  of 
heaven. 

He  who  sins  here  and  repenteth  not  of  his  sinful  deeds, 
and  instead  of  desisting  therefrom,  falls  into  sin  again  and 
again,  enters  into  doleful  regions  after  death.  Holiness  leads 
unto  holy  regions  and  sin  unto  regions  of  sin. 

He  says  elsewhere : 

WTien  I  saw  in  the  Upanishads  that  the  worship  of 
Brahma  leads  to  Nirvana,  my  soul  was  dismayed.  "All 
deeds  together  with  the  sentient  soul,  all  become  one  in 
Prnhma."    If  this  means  that  the  sentient  soul  loses  its 


it  I 


i    : 


I. 


15- 


114 


RABINDRANATH  TAGORE 


cu. 


mi 


separate  consciousness,  then  this  is  not  the  sign  of  sa  va- 
tion,  but  of  terrible  extinction This  Nirvana  salva- 
tion of  the  Upanishads  did  not  find  a  place  m  my  heart. 



We  must  add  a  portrait  from  his  own  book 
to  understand  the  human  strain  in  the  Ma- 
harshi's  religion: 

My  grandmother  was  very  fond  of  me.  To  me,  also, 
she  was  ail  in  all  during  the  days  of  my  childhood.  My 
sleeping,  sitting,  and  eating  were  all  at  her  side.  She  was 
a  deeply  religious  woman.  Every  day  she  used  to  bathe- 
in  the  Ganges  very  early  in  the  morning;  and  every  day 
she  used  to  weave  garlands  of  Qowers  with  her  own  hands 
for  the  family  shrine. 

And  at  her  death  the  Ganges  is  still  the  back- 
ground of  the  mournful  last  ceremony.  The 
pious  old  woman  was  carried  down  as  her  death 
drew  near,  according  to  custom,  but  unwillingly 
and  protestingly,  to  the  shed  by  the  Ganges. 
She  lived  three  nights. 

On  the  night  before  her  death  I  was  sitting  on  a  coarse 
mat  near  the  shed.  It  was  the  night  of  the  fuU  moon; 
the  funeral  pyre  was  near. 

The  sound  of  a  chant  came  to  him,  and  a 
sudden  sense  of  the  unreality  of  earthly  things 
stole  upon  him.     The  thought  of  wealth  and 


:i  :■ 


il 


ir^' 


DC        SPIRITUAL  COMMONWEALTH      115 

luxury,  of  soft  carpets  and  hangings,  became 
repugnant.  As  he  sat  there  alone,  a  young 
man  of  eighteen,  a  complete  revulsion  of  feeling 
took  place  in  his  mind,  and  half  consciously, 
half  unconsciously,  he  gave  himself  to  poverty 
and  Cod. 

Some  idea  has  already  been  given  of  Deven- 
dranath's  imaginative  powers,  and  we  see  that, 
in  those  gifts  of  heart  and  mind  which  a  father 
can  hand  on  to  a  son,  the  elder  Tagore  was  rarely 
endowed.  He  provided  the  congenial  atmosphere 
in  which  that  son's  nature  could  grow  to  its  full 
flourish. 

It  remains  only  to  add  the  three  articles  of 
his  simple  creed,  to  be  found  in  the  little  book  of 
guidance  that  he  once  drew  up  for  his  followers: 

1.  In  the  beginning  there  was  naught.  The  One  Su- 
preme alone  existed.    He  created  the  whole  universe. 

2.  He  is  the  God  of  Truth,  Infinite  Wisdom,  Goodne:^ 
and  Power,  Eternal  and  All  Pervading,  the  One  without 
a  second. 

3.  In  His  worship  lies  our  salvation  in  this  world 
and  in  the  next. 

The  sequel  to  this  Credo  of  the  Mabarshi 
is  to  be  found  in  the  book  of  meditations  by  his 
son  and  his  disciple. 


■  r« 


:        \: 


it 


isf^jn,  • 


CHAPTER  X 

A  BOOK  OF  MEDITATIONS 

^.n.t  Kumara  the  Venerable  showed  to  Nara.la   when  all 
hMauhs  had  bl  rubbed  out.  the  other  side  of  darkness. 

TiiE  addresses  and  lay-sermons  that  made  up 
the  prose-book,  Sddliana,  were  given  m  America, 
and  again  in  England,  very  much  as  we  now 
have  them  in  its  pages.     The  Enghsh  course 
was  delivered  at  Westminster,  in  the  Caxton  Hall, 
during  May  and  June  1913,  and  they  had  a  pro- 
found   effect   on   their   hearers.     Rabmdranath 
Tagore  has  that  unexplainable  grace  as  a  speaker 
which  holds  an  audience  without  effort,  and  his 
voice  has  curiously  impressive,  penetrative  tones 
in  it  when  he  exerts  it  at  moments  of  eloquence 
Something  foreign  and  precise  in  the  turn  of 
an  occasional   word   there   may  be;  and   there 
are  certain  high  vibrant  notes  which  you  never 
hear  from  an  English  speaker.     But  these  dif- 
ferences, when  for  instance  he  spoke  of  "Ravana  b 
city  where  we  Uve  in  exile,"  or  of  Brahma,  or 
when  he  paraphrased  a  text  of  the  Upamshads, 

116 


JBtViSP'  ':>        .-£% 


CH.  X 


A  BOOK  OF  MEDITATIONS        117 


only  helped  to  remind  us  in  the  Westminster 
Lectures  that  here  was  a  speaker  who  was  a 
new  conductor  of  the  old  wistlom  of  the  east, 
and  who,  by  some  art  of  his  owti,  had  turned  a 
London  hall  into  a  place  where  the  sensation,  the 
hubbub  and  actuality  of  the  western  world  were 
put  under  a  spell. 

As  for  the  book,  no  printed  page  can  quite 
repeat  the  things  that  lend  force  to  sentences 
made  pregnant  on  the  lip.  There  were  allusions, 
figures,  and  particular  instances  in  the  lectures 
to  be  remembered  as  full  of  a  warm  cdlour  which 
has  faded  in  cold  print.  The  most  characteristic 
passages  were  those  in  which  the  speaker's  imag- 
ination fused  the  given  theme.  Then  he  was  like 
one  drawing  on  a  fund  of  ideas  too  fluid  to  be 
caught  in  a  net,  too  subtle  to  be  held  except  in  a 
parable,  or  an  analogy  out  of  poetry.  In  fact, 
the  speaker  himself  was  the  argument;  his  homily 
took  fire  from  his  own  emotion.  Listening  to 
him  one  realised  that  he  who  spoke  was  one  who 
had  been  living  in  the  eye  of  the  sun,  communing 
with  the  air,  the  stream,  the  spirit  of  the  forest, 
and  the  hearts  of  men  and  women.  In  that 
regard,  we  ought  to  accept  Sddhand  as  a  book  of 
thoughts  on  life  and  its  realisation:  the  mcdi- 


ti 


1 


>        i    <l 


t.\ 


m 


J-  n 


l! 


i 
4 


i     i 


1  ,:m  a  i 


xi8         R.\BINDRANATH  TAGORE  oi. 

tations  of  a  poet,  ami  not  an  attempt  at  a  new 
and   complete  philosophy.     Those   pages   m   it 
that  most  clearly  reflect  its  writer's  experience, 
tested  by  his  imagination,  are  those  that  brmg 
us  most  stimulus,  presenting  as  they  do  uleas 
that  pierce  the  crust  of  our  habitual  half-belief, 
words  that  touch  the  springs  of  our  real  exist- 
ence     It  is  a  testament  that  needs  to  be  re- 
lated to  the  history  of  him  who  wrote  it  in  order 
to  have  its  full  weight  and  its  power  in  relating 
the  material  to  the  spiritual  world.     More  than 
once,  in  referring  to  his  work,  he  laid  stress  on 
this  human  fulfilment  of  a  faith  which  has  con- 
stant new  revelation  behind  it,  whose  truth  is 
decided  bv  the  first  accent  of  the  lover,  the  first 
cr>'  of  the  mother  who,  turning  to  her  babe, 
affirms  in  one  fond  word  the  doctrine  of  love 
and  the  indestructible  unity  of  the  universe. 

''Man  was  troubled  and  lived  in  fear  so  long 
as  he  had  not  discerned  the  uniformity  of  law 
in  nature;  till  then  the  world  was  alien  to  him. 
The  law  that  he  discovered  is  nothing  but  the 
perccplion   of    harmon>'    that    prevails    between 
reason,  which  is  the  soul  of  man,  and  the  workings 
of  the  world."     Hut  the   relation  of  the  mere 
understanding  is  partial.,  whereas  the  relation  of 


.__  Si 


^■mrZAK.. 


A  BOOK  01'  MEDITATIONS         119 


love  is  rompletc.  "Tn  love  the  «ensc  of  (UfTfrence 
is  obliterated,  ami  iho  human  soul  fulfills  its  pur- 
pose in  perfection,  transcending  the  limits  of  it- 
self, and  reaching  across  the  threshold  of  the 
infinite." 

Usually  in  our  ignorance  of  the  doctrines 
accepted  by  the  Rishis  in  India,  we  have  figured 
their  road  to  perfection  as  one  leading  into  the 
void.  Buddha  siiid,  however:  "It  is  true  that 
I  preach  extinction;  but  only  the  extinction  of 
pride,  lust,  evil  thought  and  ignorance;  not 
that  of  forgiveness,  love,  charity,  and  truth." 
Kven  the  lower  self  is  only  purged,  and  in  its 
sensual  appetites  extmguished,  that  the  higher 
self  may  be  delivered  from  what  Rabindranath 
calls  'the  thraldom  of  Avidya.'"  When  a  man 
lives  in  that  thraldom,  he  is  shut  up  in  the  close 
confines  of  the  lower;  his  consciousness  is  not 
awake  to  the  higher  reality  that  surrounds  him; 
he  does  not  know  the  reality  of  his  own  soul. 

"I  bow  to  God  over  and  over  again  who  is 
in  fire  and  in  water,  who  permeates  the  whole 
world,  who  is  in  the  annual  crops  as  well  as  in 
the  perennial  trees." 

The  whole  genius  of  India  and  the  race  of 
which   Rabindranath  Tagore  comes   tended   to 


a 


■«:.«^ 


:l''«^^^fS?c« 


-  1 

.-  I 

=  I 


s5    i 


m 

I 


1 20 


KABINI>H^\N  V^H  TAGuRK 


t'li 


,h.t  «.i-n«i  "'""«i'>  ""-i '" '"'™"  '^■»'':"";"'. 

The   A-.v/,;.,    vv>K-    lh.«c   «1.",   havu«   rc|>l,*'.l   . 
i„  ,h.MK-.rt  ;h.I  i..  the  miml,  and  in  JUhc  ».- 

.ivi.u.   "f    11.0    «..rl'l,    had   allamcd    N.rvana. 
Their  (<.ll..wcr»  w.rc-  lauKht  to  IhUcnx  .Lat  "■ 
„,„  .„d  wind,   in  earth  and  water,   m  all     lu^ 
,,bv  ..(  life  around  .hem,  the  l.v.n«  a...  1  idea 
'reat.ve  .pirit  was  made  real.     The  earth  dul 
not  only  serve  to  hold  and  condition  man  s  body; 
il  fuiraied  and  enhanee.1  his  whole  hemg.     I. 
,„nuct  was  n,ore  than  a  physical  contac;.t 
was  a  living  prese-nee.    The  water  dul  not  only 
cleanse  his  limbs,  it  made  clean  h.s  heart    .t 
touched  the  very  garment  of  lus  soul.    .\s  OcK-the 

laught  in  Faust: 

In  HcinK's  flood,  in  Action's  storm 
I  walk  aiul  work,  above,  bcnt-alh. 
Work  and  weave  in  endk&i  motion: 

•Tis  thus  at  the  roaring  Loom  of  Time  1  ply. 

And  weave  for  God  the  garment  thou  sce.t  Ilim  b>. 

The  one  s>nnbol  amid  the  kindred  elements 
which  helps  to  express  to  us  the  unity  of  the 
universe  is  that  of  the  Sun.  Often  when  m 
London,  Rabindra.ath  ^vould  laugh  at  the  smoky 

^  '  ...      1  _,?„...  ^r  th^  'i""  "f  Beneal. 

sunlight  as  only  luc  buudu-.-.  oi  m- 


A  UOOti  01    MKDITATION'S 


121 


Pa:J*agr  after  passaRo  in  the  IJpanishads  may 
Ik-  ri'talk'tl  telling  of  llut  sf)lcn(l()ur,  and  the 
res{  insivc  gleam  it  kindles  in  the  thought  of 
I  he  men  hving  to  grow  daily  morp  wise  Inrneath 
its  rrealiv'j  i  vs: 

"The  sun  is  the  honey  of  the  gods.  The  heaven 
is  the  rross  l)eam,  and  the  sky  hangs  from  il 
like  a  hive;  the  bright  vajwurs  are  the  swarming 
b,e8.  The  eastern  sun-rays  are  the  t ells.  Like 
bees  the  sacred  verses  of  the  scripture  brt)od  over 
the  Rig  Veda  sacrifice  like  a  flower.  I-'nuii  It, 
so  br(Kxled  uf)on,  sprang  as  its  nectar,  essence, 
fame,  glory  and  splendour  of  countenance;  vigour, 
strength,  and  health.  That  essence  flowed  out, 
and  went  toward  the  sun;  and  out  of  it  is  formed 
the  rosy  light  of  the  rising  sun." 

In  his  fourth  discourse  Rabindranath  turns 
to  the  hard  problem  of  Self.  It  is  character- 
istic of  his  understanding  of  human  nature  that 
he  should  show  so  keen  a  sympathy  with  the 
egoistic  desire  of  the  creature  to  go  free  in  its 
own  right.  "The  whole  weight  of  the  universe 
cannot  crush  out  this  individualit)  ol  mine.  I 
mi'.intain  it  in  spite  of  the  rn-mcnd.ius  i^runta- 
lion  of  all  things."  Again:  "We  are  bankrupt 
if  we  are   deprived   of   this   si)ecialty,    this   in- 


en. 


ml 


I 


,„         RABINDRANATH  TAGORE 

dividuaUty,   which   is   the   only    thing  we   can 
call  our  own;  and  which,  it  lost,  .s  a  loss  to  the 
whole  world."    So  he  inten-ts  the  crav.ng  " 
the  ego,  assuming  its  very  accent  for  the  better 
enunciation  of  its  pe-^nal  pride.    But  «.e  ^ra; 
dox  of  the  ego  is  easily  resolved.     Its  t.reles., 
self-consciousness  is  in  effect,  if  "  ""'""-•  ^^ 
result  of  the  desire  for  fulfilment  m  the  widest 
Ine.     It  is  the  burning  of  a   vick  that  .s  fed 
1  the  sources  o,  the  sun.     V  hen  the  sun 

rises    the  flame  bows  and  yelds  .tse     up  to 
the  greater  iUumination,  and  this  is  .Nirvana, 
"the  sj-mbol  of   the  extinction  of  the  lamp. 
It  does  not  mean  night;  it  means  that  the  day 

has  come.  ,      ...    «.!,« 

But  we  have  to  reaUse  the  truth  which  the 
doctrine  .  f  the  two  selves,  lesser  and  greater 
taught  in  the  Upanishads,  makes  plam-that  the 
deam  in  the  lamp  is  the  same  as  the  master- 
Ught.    "Listen  to  me,  ye  sons  of  the  immorta 
snirit    ye  who  live  in  the  heavenly  abode      I 
have  town  the  Supreme  Being  whose  Ught  shines 
forth  from  beyond  the  darkness."    To  attam  ha 
light  we  have  to  render  back  the  s"-f  " 
to  the  lamp,  since  the  soul's  tenure  of    he  b«^ 
•    .-..,:,..     There  begins  the  great  mystery,  the 


t^pjmimjj'smaaiaf^axws: 


A  BOOK  OF  MEDITATIONS 


123 


death  of  the  lx)dy,  which,  in  the  estimate  of 
the  Rishis,  accords  ver>'  well  with  that  of  Jeremy 
Taylor,  who  said  that  of  all  the  evils  in  this  world 
which  are  bitterly  reproached  with  their  bad  char- 
acter, death  is  the  most  innocent  of  its  accusation. 

We  cannot  detach  the  doctrine  of  the  greater 
illumination  and  the  philosophy  of  life  on  which 
il  rests,  expanded  in  Sddhand,  from  Rabin- 
dranath's  lyrical  expression  in  Gitanjali  and 
The  Gardener.  The  essence  of  the  lyrical  imag- 
ination lies  in  the  power  to  transcend  the  single 
delight  by  conferring  it  in  song  upon  all  creation 
and  every  fellow-creature.  The  unity  of  emo- 
tion that  it  works  toward  may  seem  in  the  first 
impulse  to  be  alike  selfish,  self-conscious  and 
intensely  self-assertive.  In  reality,  the  self- 
intensity  is  only  due  to  the  confining  of  a  force,  an 
energy  in  delight,  which  is  ready  to  break  its 
shell,  to  seek  out  its  joy-fellows  and  in  the  end 
to  forget  itself. 

By  his  songs  and  by  his  religious  ideas  alike 
Rabindranath  is  a  lyric  interpreter  of  natural 
and  supernatural,  and  of  the  human  nature  they 
condition.  His  belief  in  the  joy  of  life,  and  the 
realisation  in  created  forms  of  the  eternal  hap- 
piness, is  one  that  belongs  to  the  doctrine  of 


mi^f^:*^mst^mm^ 


\l 


m 


RABINDRANATH  TAGORE 


CH. 


124 

"Brahmu-Vihara"    and    the    harmony    betwixt 
earth  and  heaven.     We  seem,  as  we  h.ten  to 
Za,  to  be  passing  out  of  a  great  t-wn-^y^bo 
o(  our  erowded  eivilisation-on  a  summer  mom 
i,  and  looking  up  into  a  concave  of  sky  wtuch 
„a  ches  for  the  pure  eyes  of  Sita  below  .t.    The 
.esse,  receives  the  pure  «  a.,    ng  t^ 
its  depth  of  innocence.       Where  me  sg 
%J  into  the  void,  there  is  the  real  person- 
!lity  of  the  eve."     "If  the  eye  .s  satisfied,  the 
u^issar.sned;  if  the  sun  is  satisned    heaven 

is  satisfied."    So  with  the  mnocencc  of  the  eye 
;„t:f  Ruski,,-s  phrase),  and  with  the  ^art  o 
a  child,  one  can  enter  into  the  joy  of  the  four 
regions  and  conquer  the  worlds. 

In   his    fifth   discourse    Rabmdranath   brmgs 
1^  series  of  reaUsations  to  a  period  with  tas 
,h,  mvstery  of   love.     "Who  could 
pages  on  the  m>^t"^  °'  .      „^,g  „ot 

have  breathed  or  movec  if  the  sty  w 
fiUed  with  jov,  with  love?"    The  sou^  is  on  pd- 
!rimage-  i    'is  travelUng  from  the  law,  which 
S   its  .dative  place  in  the  moral   order, 
rtve,  which  is  its  mora,  freedom^    Budcfta 
named   tl,is  infinite  love  Brahma-Vihara-  the 
"of  living  in  Brahma."    And  he  Uught  t^t 
vloever  .ould  attam  to  it  must  purge  hmiseU 


,  i      M» 


viJKli>«K7 


X  A  BOOK  OF  MEDITATIONS         125 

from  hatred,  and  the  malice  of  deceit,  and  the 
rage  of  injury.  The  free  spirit  was  he  wlio  could 
have  measureless  love  for  all  creatures— even  as 
a  mother  has  it  for  her  only  child. 

The  light  within,  the  little  ether  in  the  heart, 
is  continually  flowing  out  to  join  the  light  with- 
out: it  is  the  water-drop  going  to  the  sea,  the 
child  to  the  mother,  the  eye  to  the  sun.  Thus 
is  fulfilled  the  circle  of  realisations.  "From 
joy  are  bom  all  creatures,  by  joy  they  are  sus- 
tained, towards  joy  they  progress,  and  into  joy 
they  enter."  With  this  perfecting  of  the  circle 
of  delight  our  whole  being  dilates;  a  luminous  con- 
sciousness of  the  far  greater  world  about  us  enters 
the  soul,  and  obsesses  it.  Then  it  is,  indeed,  that 
our  spirit  finds  its  larger  self,  and  becomes  sure 
it  is  immortal.  "It  dies  a  hundred  times  in  its 
enclosures  of  self;  for  separateness  is  doomed  to 
die,  it  cannot  be  made  eternal.  But  it  never 
can  die  where  it  is  one  with  the  all."  There  is 
the  secret  of  that  persuasion  of  immortality, 
which  is  instinctive  in  most  of  us,  with  the  in- 
stmct  of  life  itself  and  the  obstinate  desire  for 
its  perpetuity.  Now  convert  the  term  of  joy 
into  love,  and  you  have  the  lyric  formula  com- 
plete, which  was  behind  the  songs  of  the  Vaish- 


iil 


.20         RABINDRANATH  TAGORE  cb. 

„a^^  poets  and  h  behind  those  of  GUanjali. 
"From  love  the  world  is  bom,  by  love  it  is  sus- 
tained, towards  love  it  moves,  and  mto  love 

"  Wc"^ss  on  to  the  chapter  which  treats  of 
realisation  in  .ction-a  very  '"":"-'^'iff  "j" 
as  because  it  is  there  we  have  though    the  In- 
dian ideal  was  most  apt  to  fad.     In  Us  pages 
Rabindranalh  tells  us  clearly  whore  the  .deals 
of  east  and  west  differ,  and  where  they  may 
complete  one  another.     In  the  west    he  say., 
the  «>ul  of  man  is  mainly  concerned  with  ex  end- 
ing and  extcmising  its  powers.     It  would  leave 
a^de   that   field   of   inner   consciousness  where 
its  true  fulfihnent  lies.    Th=re  is  no  rest  m  the 
process  of  its  material  development.    Its  pohucs 
Lk  of  progress,  meaning  a  new  stretch  of  sen^- 
tion;  its  science  talks  of  a  restless  never-endmg 
evolution-,   its  metaphysic   has   now   begun   to 
talk  of  the  evolution  of  God  Himself.    Because 
of  this  insistence  on  the  doing  and  the  becom- 
ing, the  Indian  seers  of  to-day  perceive  the  dan- 
gers in  the  western  world  of  the  tyram^y  of  the 
Ltcrial  side  of  civilisation  and   the  mtoxrca- 
Uon  of  power.    "They  know  not  the  beauty  of 
completion,"  says  R^bindranath.    In  Ini-  the 


''*   y  L 


A  BOOK  OF  MEDITATIONS 


127 


g 
o 

>e 

1- 

1- 

le 

a- 

of 

he 


danger  comes  from  the  want  of  outward  ac- 
tivity. Her  thinkers  despise  the  fields  of  power 
and  of  extension.  Their  intellect  in  its  attempt 
to  realise  Brahma  "works  itself  stone-dry," 
and  their  heart,  seeking  to  confine  him  within 
its  own  outpourings,  turns  to  emotion  and  neg- 
lects the  stem  bonds  of  law  and  the  discipline 
of  the  real.  These  are  the  extremes  on  either 
side;  for  the  truer  philosophy  of  the  east,  as 
we  find  it  in  the  Vedas  and  the  Upanishads,  does 
not  neglect  the  natural  fulfilment  of  the  activity 
of  nature.  "Knowledge,  power,  and  action  arc 
of  his  nature,"  says  the  Upanishads,  and  again, 
"By  his  many-sided  activity,  which  radiates  in 
all  directions,  does  he  fulfil  the  inherent  wants 
of  all  his  different  creatures."  Rabindranath, 
coming  as  a  true  intermediary  between  east  and 
west,  sees  in  the  life  of  meditation  and  in  the  life 
of  action  the  two  principles  at  work  which  are  as 
the  poles  of  our  being;  and  he  ends  with  this  char- 
acteristic prayer  to  the  Worker  of  the  Universe: 

"Let  the  irresistible  current  of  thy  universal  energy 
come  like  the  impetuous  south  wind  of  Spring,  let  it  come 
rushing  over  the  vast  field  of  the  life  of  man:  ...  let 
our  newly  awakened  powers  cry  out  for  unlimited  fulfil- 
ment in  leaf  and  flower  and  fruit." 


•'«■«■•■• 


r."P3Ei^^:i|i\'9»^^«^^>4r'''S  ^ 


"lI'K^p'^f^SaSSivt 


R..\BlNr)Ri\NATH  TAGORE 


CR. 


ij8 

The  realisation  in  the  flo«r  and  ">'  '-'■  ;"'',,';;,*^ 
forms  of  beauty,  is  .he  next  in  the  ;«!-"-  '^  f  ™f, 
o.,  feoUn,  for  the  h--  M  ■"  -atur  m  art  tha,  ^^ 

realise  harmony  in  the  universe,  a»u         » 
„.„,.p<,„,U.„ce  «ith  .he  innate  ^.^  <^^  ^^  ^^ 

There  remains  but  am:  hnk  more  lo 

r  Vl^i:i  encUa  a.  W'^;— ;:^-- 

S'Serrori^-n'-i'' "'--'  ^  "^^^ 

rightly  for  eternal  years. 

At  the  close  of  Sadhana  we  find  the  phi- 
losophy of  the  great  renunciation  put  into  its 
s'^e  t  terms.  We  give  up  aU  our  worldly 
fissions,  our  sensual  ties,  our  aff«  K>n. 
powers,  and  honours,  one  by  one.  There  .s  an 
Tnd  of  getting  and  having.    This  ego.  the  sm^U 

^\l  may  desire  to  appropriate  to  itself  a  little 
„f  'the  uncontainablc  wealth  of  the  universe. 
To  what  end?  Can  the  house  detach  a  piece 
of  surrounding  air  or  a  stretch  of  ovemching 
sky  and  say.  This  is  mine,  and  mine  only?  As 
well  mav  the  soul  try  to  take  for  itself  what  > 
(.cc  dement,  or  the  individual  try  to  detam  the 

universal.  For  everything  in  the  "-ver^,  sa)-s 
the  Vi«nishad,  is  enveloped  by  God.  Each 
Uving  thing  is   l-art  of   the  commonwealth  of 


X  A  BOOK  OF  MEDITATIONS         129 

heaven.      Try    the    most    common    of    illustra- 
tions: 

When  we  take  food  and  satisfy  our  hungc  r,  it  is  a 
complete  act  of  possession.  So  I  ■»«  as  the  hunger  is  not 
satisfied,  it  is  a  pleasure  to  eat.  Fur  thin  our  enjoyment 
of  eating  touches  at  i  very  iK)int  the  infinite.  I'.ut  once 
our  hunger  is  satisfied,  when  the  apiKtite  reaches  the  end 
of  its  non-realisation,  there  is  the  end  of  its  activity  and  its 
pleasure.  We  are  greater  than  our  {K)>.sessions,  and  the 
wise  man  is  he  who  despises  his  property,  knowing  well 
that  this  night  and  every  night  his  soul  is  re<iuired  of  hun. 
What  weight  is  that  of  sense  and  sensation,  of  getting  and 
hoarding,  which  holds  back  the  free  spirit  from  the  com- 
munion of  heaven? 

Not   by   knowledge,   not   by   any   prescience 
or   traditional    ideas,    can    we   attain    Brahma. 
But  the  Holy  Spirit  can  be  known  by  intuition, 
and  joy  is  its  winged  messenger.     'Mind  can 
never  know  him,"  says  the  Indian  sage  in  the 
Upanishad;  "words  can  never  describe  him;  he 
can  only  be  known  by  our  soul,  and  her  joy  in 
him,  and  her  love."     This  is  the  last  realisa- 
tion, that  of  the  infinite;  attamed  through  the 
breaking  up  of  the  finite,  wliich  tries  to  bind  the 
universe  in  its  meshes,  and  to  tie  beauty— to  take 
Campion's  phrase — to  one  form. 
It  may  seem  that,  in  working  through  the 


m 


mMs 


,30         RABINDRANATH  TAGORE 

t^ycrs  of  fmitc  cxiKricncc  marke.1  off  by  the 
colours  ot  goo<I  and  evil,  the  bnghtncss  .rf  bfe 
ami  the  darkness  ot  death,  to  the  r  ah^t.on 
„t  the  infinite,  the  author  ot  S<M/,a««  has  let 
the  poet  in  him  avert  the  rigour  ot  the  d,s..pl.ne 

;,siL^  by  the  Brahminlc   doctrine.     But  do 
rethink 'him,   l>ecause  o.   hU  interp^ta- 

,  the  twin  .unctions  Joy  and^-  ^^^ 
effect  In  the  approach  to  the  '^"""" 
bliss   a  dlverter  ot  the  moral  law.    The  way  « 
S'and  hard,  and  the  divine  joy  can  only  be 
won  by  driving  out  the  sensual  and  the  ahmenU 
Inections  ot  our  nature.     "That  m  which    he 
poet  rejoiced-the  breath  ot  lite,  m  .ts  reve^«l 
toms-in  that  the  gods  themselves  ex^t^      Bu 
evU  must  be  driven  out  by  means  of  that  spml 
which  is  hidden  in  prana,  the  breath  ot  hte;  only 
X.  it  is  driven  out  can  the  enUghtened  nun 
go  to  the  world  where  he   becomes  one  w.th 

""Ihe  old  Indian  seers  taught  us  that  he  who 
had  grown  wise  by  his  mediUtion  and  by  h^ 
lefstanding  therefrom  of  *at  h  e  brea^h^  wOl 
have  his  reward  in  the  end.  At  the  t.me  of 
del^  he  wnU  go  tree,  although  his  mortal  sUte 
S  seem  at  urst  to  be  that  of  the  rest  of  men. 


u^.-r--'^-': 


%.-r^f.li^T., 


A  BOOK  OF  MEDITATIONS         131 


The  ;  nsual  activity  will  pass  into  the  mind, 
the  mind-activity  into  the  breath  of  life,  and 
that  breath  into  the  Five  lUcments.  These 
elements,  again,  will  lie  absorbed  up  to  their 
seed  in  the  highest  self,  and  there  the  old  birth 
ends.  But  then  it  is  that  the  subtle  body  rises 
again,  and  emerging,  reaches  a  ray  of  the  sun, 
and  takes  the  northern  or  southern  course  that 
leads  him  to  the  road  of  light— Archis.  This 
light  and  its  concomitant  powers  lead  liim  forth 
on  to  the  new  plane,  where  he  can  create  joy 
in  all  its  forms,  and  give  those  forms  material 
bodies,  and  put  living  souls  in  them;  and  he  can 
move  in  these  at  will.  At  last,  through  this 
creative  energy,  he  arrives  at  the  higher  knowl- 
edge, that  of  the  higher  self;  and  at  the  end  of 
this  second  birth  attains  Brahma. 

Rabindranath  Tagore  has  shown  us  in  Sdd- 
hand  a  path,  not  for  the  Sanyasi  and  the  ascetic, 
but  one  which  every  man  may  tread  on  his  way 
to  the  first  gate  of  mortality.  Joy  may  attend 
his  steps  there,  and  love  may  be  his  guide;  but 
there  is  more  in  the  interlude  than  they  at  once 
can  discover;  and  what  that  more  is,  and  the 
mystery  and  the  judgment  that  stands  at  the 
gateway  like  the  angel  with  the  sword,  can  be 


«  ! 


I: 

i 

*■ 

V 


,j,         R.\BINDRANATH  TAGORL        * « 

divin«l  by  turning  tr..m  that  profound  parable 
tm,  r,.  Kin,  oj  0.  D.r^  C*.«^^o 
the  UpanUhads  and  their  doctrmc  of  the  King 
of  Heaven. 


ft-W' 


^  I 


(ilAPTKR  XI 

SHANTI   NIKF.TAN 

Then  they  uid  to  the  mind,  "Do  you  »ing  for  u»."    "Yw," 
tai.l  the  mind,  and  mng-Upanishads. 

To  know  how  education  can  be  made  musical, 
both  in  the  old  way  and  the  new,  we  should 
turn  to  the  school  of  peace  at  Shanti  Niketan. 

In  our  idea  of  the  Eastern  mind  the  end  of 
its  intelligence  was  meditation;  all  Indian  doc- 
trine in  our  estimaic  pointed  to  a  gradual  ab- 
sorption of  the  principle  of  life  into  the  final  per- 
fection of  rest.  The  path  towards  such  a  perfection 
being  long  and  difficult,  the  exercises  which  were 
followed  in  order  to  attain  it  were  correspond- 
ingly difficult  and  obscure.  The  whole  of  educa- 
tion seems  to  have  consisted  in  the  study  of  a 
moral  and  physical  philosophy  of  definite  char- 
acter. 

The  many  gorgeous  arts  of  India,  her  music, 
her  science  of  healing,  her  language,  her  crafts, 
belonged  to  the  domain  of  active  life.  Such 
accumulated  knowledge  of  the  arts  of  Ufe  was 


I  f' 


/^ 


it 
\    I! 


ft 


It 

Ff 


R.\BINl)RANATIl  TA(.()Ri: 


en. 


»34 

han<le<!  <h.wn  from  f.tluT  to  son.  fn.m  mother 
t.,  daughter.     The  .scIh.oIs  u.vl  univers.UcH  had 
no  t»art   in  such  knowUdge;  their  training  was 
fcr  eternal  ends.     I  am  not  .ure  tha.  the  trun- 
ing  in  rea.lin^  and  vs riling  that  eamc  lo  be  g.ven 
t„  scleete.1  chiUl"en  in   the  village  srh.H,l.   wa. 
not  hK.ked  uiH,n  in  the  In'.inning  a.s  an  in.t.atiou 
into  the  first  step  of  the  path  to  heavenly  v.. s<lom 
rather  than  as  preparation  for  the  art  of  livmg. 

The  earliest  shai)e  taken  hy  this  idea  of  the 
philosophic  school  or  university  is  found  ;n  the 
Asram,  or  forest  school,    .f  a.uient  IndM.     Ac^- 
curding  to  an  old  eust<.m.  the  youth  -n  h.s  sUulent 
days  left  home  and  wert  to  stay  wUh  the  Guru 
or  wise  man  in  his  hermit -ge,  there  to  lead  the 
simple  ascetic   life  of   the  learner  and  d.sciple, 
and  to  live  close  to  the  very  heart  of  Mother 
Nature,  away  from  all  the  excitements  of  dies. 
This  old  ideal  of  education  apixaled  verv'  strcmglv 
to  Rabindranath.     Recently   he   has  ^a.d    m  a 
Bengali    article,    "We    do    not    want    nowadays 
templesofworshipandout    :.rd  rites  and  cere- 
moules;  what  wc  really  want  is  an  Asram      V\c 

want  a  place  where  the  bcatUy  .f  nature  and  the 
noblest  pursuits  of  n.an  are  in  .  plea^aat  harm-.ny 
Q...  te--lo  of  worship  is  there    wl>cre  outward 


..^■■; 


fy 


K'" 


•rTSh5>*?:^„ 


I! 


m 


l4« 


;v„-rfr^««SiS«"SHM 


XI 


SHANTI  NIKETAN 


135 


nature  and  the  human  soul  meet  in  union.  Our 
only  rites  and  ceremonies  are  self-sacrificing 
good  works." 

It  is  not  only  to  such  ancient  and  pure  ideals 
that  Pn.bindranath  responds;  he  is  keenly  alive 
to  all  that  is  most  noble  in  the  ideals  that  here  and 
now  make  themselves  felt  in  our  keen  and  tu- 
multuoLs  modem  societies.  Unlike  the  traditional 
Guru  or  master  of  India's  earlier  days,  while 
he  believes  in  aspiration,  he  believes  also  that 
the  will,  purified  in  aspiring,  should  translate 
its  faculty  into  the  material  and  actual. 

As  his  philosophy  expressed  in  Sddhand  de- 
clares, he  looks  to  the  constructive  realisation 
of  life;  and  his  work  for  the  younger  generation 
has  taken  hur-an  form  in  the  remarkable  little 
community  near  Bolpur,  where  his  ideas  have 
had  free  egress.  The  realisation  in  action,  which 
is  an  aiticle  of  his  faith,  has  there  found  its  living 
fulfilment.  Shanti  Niketan  was  originally  founded 
by  his  father,  who  had  there  a  house,  garden, 
mandir  (small  temple),  library,  and  all  conven- 
iences for  retirement  and  study. 

In  talking  of  his  own  schooldays,  Rabin- 
(lianath  Tagore  spoke  with  the  feeling  of  a  man 
who  had  suffered  much  and  needlessly  in  liis 


■■^^.r.'^-^*  -■•ri??s',%t^':- ?"_ 


^■^■fr-"":; 


"^ws^^^s^s^s- 


lOi^L^'^i 


li  i 


136         RAniNDRANATH  TAGORfi  cu. 

own  boyish,  cxpcricnco,  and  had  sought  a  cure 
for  so  deterrent  and  mortifying  a  discipline  in  the 
case  and  for  the  sake  of  others.    To  some  it  may 
seem  that  the  trouble  which  we  recognise  in  our 
own  schools  is  due  in  part  to  the  obstinate  great 
ailment  of  youth  itself.    To  him  it  seemed  pos- 
sible to  find  a  more  natural  way  of  education,  by 
going  back  to  instinct  and  gi.ing  on  to  a  new  under- 
standing of   the   imaginative   and   the  humane 
needs  of  the  growing  boy.     In  India  the  folk 
live  in  the  open,  as  we  cannot  in  this  countiy, 
and  it  is  easier  there  to  bring  the  solace  of  nature 
and  her  doings  out  of  doors  to  bear  upon  her 

children.  ^ 

In  trying  to  get  a  notion  of  Rabindranatn  s 
method,   we  ought  to  knoNs    something  of   the 
Indian  schools  as  they  were;   as  indeed,   it  is 
to  be  feared,  they  slill  are  in  many  parts  of 
Bengal.     Some  of  the  accounts  remind  us  not 
a  little  of  the  old  Iri.h  hedge-school.     In  one 
vUlagc,   described   in   Bengal   Peasant  Life,   the 
master  was  a  good  raaUicmatician  and  logician 
and  a  hurd  disciplinarian.     liis  rod  was  a  long 
thin    bamboo    cane:    "Vou    could    hardly    pass 
the   door  during   .diool   hours  without   hearing 
the  shop-a-shop  of  the  bamboo  switch."    A  more 


xz 


SHANTI  NIKETAN 


137 


extended  chastisement  was  ironically  called  Xadu- 
Gopal,  that  is  Gopal's  or  Krishna's  sweetmeat— 
the  sweetmeat  being  a  brick.  In  fart,  two  bricks 
were  used,  the  boy  in  disgrace  having  to  kneel 
down  on  one  knee,  with  his  arms  <mtstretthcd, 
when  a  large  brick  was  placed  on  each  ami. 
If  he  let  one  of  them  fall  the  bamboo  switch  fell 
just  as  surely  on  his  pate.  Even  the  Wdsli-Xol, 
a  board  that  used  to  l>e  hung  rountl  the  necks  of 
chihiren  in  Welsh  schools  to  punish  them  f(jr 
using  their  mother-tongue,  was  not  .so  humiliating 
as  the  Nadu-Gopal.  Yet  another  jmnishment 
was  that  of  stinging  the  naked  body  of  a  boy 
with  a  kind  of  net tle~/>/V//«//  -much  shaqier 
than  ours  in  its  venom.  Tht  se  were  not  the 
invention  of  this  particular  tyrant,  but  a  regular 
part  of  the  old  country  school  tradition. 

Then  as  to  the  things  taught:  the  one  essen- 
tial matter  to  begin  with  was  learning  to  write  the 
characters — no  easy  acciuirement  in  Bengali, 
because  of  its  arabesque  and  convolute  forms. 
In  the  old  village  schools  a  boy  did  nothing  but 
write  for  .some  >ears.  lie  began  with  chalk  on 
the  ground  it.self;  then  (uii'.  liie  reed  ixu  and 
ink,  with  a  palm  leaf  for  pai)er.  So  there  was  a 
floor  class  and  a  palm-leaf  class;  and  by  slow  de- 


'* 


II  i 


,  it- 


138  RiKBINDRANATH  TAGORE  ch. 

crc^cs  the  urchin  went  on  from  one  to  another 
and  having   the  fear  of   the  bamboo  rod  and 
Gopal's  cruel  sugar-plum,  and  the  stmging  bM 
to  keep  him  diUgent,  he  learnt  in  time  h.s  three 
R's  and  how  to  indite  letters  and  read  b<K>ks. 

The  principle  of  certain  sch(K,ls  m  India  as 
in  England  was  that  the  discipline  ought,  and 
was  meant,  to  be  hard  and  penal.     There  was 
no  notion  of  making  the  work  a  dehght  or  of 
showing  how  knowledge  enlarged  a  boys  heart, 
put  him  on  terms  with  nature,  and  gave  him 
control  over  his  own  powers  and  the  b.g  world 
and  his  fcUow-creaturos.    If  a  bc.y  played  truant 
he  was  brought  back,  tied  to  bamboo-poles  by 
two  of  his  older  fellow-pupils  like  some  miscreant 
or    dangerous    criminal.      How    admirably    and 
helpfully    Rabindranath   Tagore    has   made   use 
of  the  common  interest  of  the  boys  at  his  schoo 
converting  cruelty  into  true  discipline,  we  shall 
hear  at  the  turn  of  another  page. 

The  svTtipathv  and  understanding  he  has  for 
a  youngster's  difficullies  are  to  be  learnt  in  his 
Jes.  In  the  stor>'  of  Fatik,  he  has  made  for 
us  a  small  boy's  tragedy,  which  tells  how  easy 
it  is  for  a  child  to  mi.ss  happiness  when  he  is 
sensitive    and    unfriendly    fate    cuts   across   his 


xt 


SH\NTT  NIKETAN 


139 


affections.  Fatik  is  'Tif-  of  those  boys  who  have 
too  much  unregulated  nervous  energy  and  too 
keen  a  wit  to  be  able  (o  ^^juare  their  own  comfort 
with  that  of  their  ciders.  Even  his  own  mother, 
whom  he  loves  dearly,  does  not  know  how  to 
manage  him ;  his  quarrels  with  bis  brothers  incur 
her  wrath,  and  when  an  opportuw  unck  appears 
and  takes  him  oIT  l«>  town— Calcutta  -the  change 
does  not  prove  lucky.  Fatik  is  not  a  welcome 
visitor  to  his  aunt,  and  there  the  boy's  tragedy 
soon  ends. 

The  measure  of  Fatik's  unhappiness  at  school 
gives  us  the  practical  reason  for  the  needed  re- 
forms which  must  come  if  education  is  to  be 
humane  and  such  as  to  develop  all  that  is  best 
in  the  pupil.  It  is  from  the  lips  of  one  of  his 
own  pupils,  who  was  educated  for  nine  years  at 
Shanti  Niketan  and  is  at  present  an  under- 
graduate of  Pembroke  College,  Cambridge,  that 
we  have  chiefly  gathered  the  following  account  of 
his  remarkable  i  \i)eriment. 

Like  most  schemes  that  bear  fruit  the  school 
arose  in  a  natural  way  from  little  beginnings. 
As  we  said,  the  Maharshi  in  his  early  youth  had 
retired  there  for  meditation,  and  it  was  there, 
under   the   great    "chatim"    tree,    that   he   lirst 


ft 


,40         RABINDRANATH  TAGORE  en 

received   his  enlightenment.     The  place    there- 
fore, k-came  very  dear  to  him,  and  he  founded 
a  garden  on  that  plot  of  land,  and  built  a  house 
and  a   ten.ple  of  coloured   glass  with  a  white 
marble  floor  where,  according  to  the  trust  deed, 
"every  morning  and  evening,  each  day  through- 
out the  N'car  must  be  performed  the  worship  of 
the  one 'true  God."     This  Shanli   Niketan,  or 
\bode  of  Peace,  was  kept  oixn  to  the  outside 
nviblic.    Any  one  wishing  for  a  few  days  of  quiet 
,neditation  was  welcome  there  as  a  guest,  and  the 
place  ^^as  knoNvn  as  a  religiou.  hermitage  before 
the  school  was  thought  of. 

It  was  while  raiding  there  thai  the  idea  of 
reviving  the  Asram,  the  forest  school  of  ancient 
India,  occurred   to  the  mind  of  Rabhidranath, 
and  it  was  as  an  e>.{KTiment  in  this  <iirection 
that  in  the  year  upi  he  began  to  keep  a  litUe 
school   Nsilh   two  or   three   boys  only.     In  two 
years'  tunc  there  were  eighteen  pupils.     In  four 
years'  time  the  tmmber  liad  risen  to  sixty,  and 
there  arc  now  two  hundred  boys  at  Shanti  Nike- 
tan.  ,    ^      ... 

V  fur  the  routine  ui  tli.  school,  I  will  use 
as  uu  as  pus:,rble  the  words  uf  Rabindranatli's 
t)wn  pu|>iL 


XX 


SHANTI  NIKETAN 


141 


Early  in  the  morning,  at  4.^,  n  choir  of  boys  go  round 
the  sth<M)l  >in^inK  suiij^s,  and  rouse  tht-  slec|xT8  up  into 
the  beauty  aiul  cahn  uf  early  (iavvn.  As  soon  as  they  arc 
up  the  lM)ys  set  to  (leaning  their  own  rcwms,  for  from  the 
he^inniiij.:  they  are  tauRht  not  to  despise  any  manual 
work,  b  It  to  df>  for  themselves  without  the  help  of  serv- 
ants as  fir  as  po^iblo.  After  that  they  all  have  to  go 
ihrouL^h  oiiie  pii\^ital  exercises  in  the  o|)en  air,  followed 
by  the  monnnR  bath,  after  which  each  retired  for  a  quar- 
ter of  an  hour'i  (juict  iiK-ditation. 

A  recent  visitor  to  the  school  gives  us  a  fuller 
account  of  this  early  moming  meditation. 

At  6  A.  M.  a  most  musical  gong  tempted  us  to  look  out. 
The  guest  luiuso  in  which  we  were  staying  was  in  the 
centre  of  a  lural  ^^anlen.  Dotted  about  among  the  trees 
were  a  nuiuber  (»f  separate  dormitory  buildings  of  the 
simpiisl  t>i><'.  Out  of  them  the  boys  were  streaming,  each 
with  his  mat,  tt)  take  up  a  place  under  some  secluded 
tree  for  the  fifteen  minutes  of  meditation  which  was  to 
follow.  There  wa^  something  strangely  moving  in  the 
s-i^lii  of  these  little  liKUfes  in  wliite,  pricking  out  the  scene 
all  round,  i  teli  under  his  several  shrub  or  tree.  Then 
a-'otlitr  },'<»'■•'  •'f'"'  \v!;ith  they  all  move  reverently  in 
prtKes-ior.  i  Un  tliu  seh(X)l  temple. 

A  vcr\  liicf  service  romcs  after  breakfast; 
L  [miv  m,  !i  •>!,  ;he  boys  arc  assembled  and  chant 
logi'tln  r  a  "Mantra"  from  the  Uimnishad'^. 
M()miii ;  school  is  from  8  till  11.30.     Ail  clasbc^j 


,4,         RABINURANATH  TAGORE 

are  held  in  the  open  air  when  the  weather  is  fine; 
i„  (act.thenlhe  whole  life  of  the  school  go« 

„„  out  of  doors.  It  is  a  garden  school.  The 
various  classes  meet  under  different  trees  m  the 
grounds,  each  lx>y,  when  there  is  writmg  to  be 
done,  taking  his  own  mat,  inli-iK.t,  paper  and 

'"m    twelve  o'cloclL   they   have   their  dinner. 
Because  of  the  attemc«n  heats  of  India,  prac- 
tically all  the  hard  work  of  the  school  is  got 
through  in  the  morning  hours.     In  the  after- 
noon the  work  is  light;  they  have  their  lessons 
to  prepare;  then  comes  tiffm,  and  games,  dr.llmg, 
gardening  foUow.    In  place  of  joining  in  the  games 
some  of  the  older,  more  cai>able  boys  go  to  the 
neighbouring  village,  where  they  hod  evemng 
daL  to  teach  the  nllage-bds,     AfUr  games 
come    the   evening   bath,   meditation,  and    the 
chanting  of  a  Sanskrit  hymn  before  the  last  meal 
and  when  the  meal  is  over  the  scholars  have  an 
hour   of    story-lelUng,    acting   dramatic    scenes 
singing,  and  so  on.     This  peasant  time  «  not 
sh're.1  in  by  the  older  boys  .ho  are  working  tor 
matr>culati,.n;  in  their  case  e.Ura  hours  of  work 
are  necessary,  but  for  aU  the  rest  evemng  study 
is  ioibiddcn. 


XI 


SHANTI  NIKETAN 


U3 


AftfT  the  tiAy's  work  they  retire  to  bed  at  hftlf-past 
nine,  and  a  choir  of  boys  aKoin  goes  round  the  school 
singing  evening  songs.  They  begin  their  days  with  songs 
and  they  end  them  with  songs. 

As  for  the  sihool  discipline,  that  is  a  matter 
that   has   been   diligently   thought   out   by   the 
founder.     During   his   visit   to  America   he  in- 
quired most  carefully  into  the  most  intelligent 
systems  of  education;   he  did   the  same  while 
staying  in  England.     There  were  no  sources  of 
information  on  the  subject  that  he  did  not  ex- 
plore.    His  scheme  of  education  for  his  boys 
was  to  be  distinctively  national,  patriotic,  ab- 
solutely   Indian,    of    the   very   soil   t)f    Bengal; 
yet  it  was   to   be   infused  with   and   aided   by 
the  highest  and   most   intelligent  thought  and 
method  of  which   the  human  spirit   had   hith- 
erto made  itself  master.    What  mattered  creed 
or  race  or  caste  so  that  the  collective  spirit  of 
mankind  served  and  was  served?     In  this  Ra- 
bindranath  has  shown  himself  to  be  faithful  to 
his  belief  that  the  one  spirit  of  life  suffuses  all 
creation  with  its  healing  ra>s,  no  creature  being 
excepted. 

It  was,   I  believe,   through   his  knowledge  of 
the     successfully     applied     principle     of     self- 


t 


il 


$* 


t   If 


RABINDRANATH  TAGORE 


oi. 


U4 

govenunenl  in  the  George  Junior  Republic  of 
America,  that  it  ca"hie  to  be  the  rule  at  Bdpur 
that  the  boys  should  l)e  left  as  much  as  p<.ss.ble 
to  themselves,  and  manage  their  own  atTairs 
without  any  interferenre  from  outside. 

The  boys  cUa  a  captain  for  every  week,  who  !«•<'. 
thTordcr  .H  kept.  a,ul  the  »..>.  have  t.,  chey  h.m  un- 
nUciUy.    Under  the  captain  are  many  .uh-capta.ns.  al-., 
rS.  who  have  each  und.t».irs,.c.ddu^ 
of  six  or  «:ven  boys  whom  they  have  to  l.^k  adcr^  1  hm 
i,  a  *ort  of  court  of  justice  h-M  that  sUs  every  n  Kht. 
Breaches  of  conduct  on  the  pari  of  any  member  of  th. 
^hll  arc  brought  before  it  for  tnal.    It  n  only  extreme 
rncniifTuult  c^s  that  the  teachers  .hemselvc.  huvc  to 
deal  with,  and  such  only  occur  very  rarely. 

One  of   the  most   remarkable  effects  of   the 
religious  spirit  in  which  the  scho<.l  is  carried  on 
is  that  no  great  distinction  <  xists  between  the 
teachers  and  pupils  of  Shanli  Xiketan;  all  are 
learners  together,  aU  are  endeavouring  to  follow 
the  one  rising  l>ath.    Public  opinion,  as  expressed 
and  felt  by  the  boys,  has  its  influence  on  the 
teachers  as  well.     Punishment   takes  the   form 
of  a  complete  boycott  .f  the  otTcndcr,  who  is  rcm- 
stated  at  unce  on  confession  of  his  fault ;  coqM.ral 
pun  toei.L  of  any  description  is  absolutely  for- 
bidden. 


SHANTI  NIKETAN 


«45 


Add  thrit  the  physical  well-being  of  the  boys 
is  very  car*  fully  atlin<lcd  to.  They  are  trainetl 
to  be  hanly  and  sflf-rfliani,  and  have  regular 
daily  drillini^,  exercises,  and  games.  Mmt  of 
the  pri/<s  given  at  the  »|M»rts  a)mi)ctition  of 
the  (li.^lrl*  t  are  carried  o(T  I)y  the  Shanti  Xikctan 
lM>y.s.  I  iro-drill  is  punriually  gone  through. 
"KtcL-ntly,"  .siiys  uur  umUrgraduate  friend,  "a 
fire  l)r«»i^c  (tut  about  midnight  in  the  town  of 
Bolpur,  V. Iiith  is  alwuit  two  miles  from  the  stluM)l; 
the  boys  at  once  raced  to  the  town,  and  after 
wtnic  hriul  work  got  the  fire  under,  while  all  the 
town  ,|A()ple  st<KHl  crying  out  and  watching  it 
helplosly,  not  knowing  what  to  do." 

'Iho  aicount  of  Shanti  Niketan  would  be 
inconipKte  unless  some  idea  were  given  of  the 
part  taken  by  Rabindranath  Tagore  himself 
in  conthu  ling  the  school. 

Not  many  fathers  sjK-ak  of  their  sons  with 
as  great  a  longing  and  affection  as  the  poet 
did  ef  liis  boys.  "I  am  far  hapi)ier  there  with 
them  than  anywhere  else."  His  affectionate 
care  i^f  tlicm  is  a  iK)werful  spirit  in  the  school; 
it  w;  s  its  birth-spirit,  and  it  sustains  the  pkce 
and  all  who  live  and  work  there.  "The  boys 
tall  him  Ciurudu,  wliich  means  the  revered  master. 


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146         RABINDRANATH  TAGORE  ch. 

He  takes  no  active  part  in  the  daUy  routine  of 
the  school,  although  sometimes  he  takes  classes 
in  Uterature   and  singing,   and  encourages  the 
boys  to  bring  him  their  efforts  at  original  work, 
both  in  painting,  drawing,  and  poetry.    He  often 
spoke  to  me  with  enthusiasm  and  hopefuhiess 
of  their  original  work  and  of  the  pleasure  he  felt 
when  they  carried  their  first-fruits  to  him.     In 
every  branch  of  art  he  is  their  inspurer;  at  the 
end  of  each  term  the  boys  in  general  produce 
and  act  one  of  his  plays.    He  himself  joins  them 
and  takes  a  part  in  the  play,  whatever  it  may 
be.    When  lately  The  King  of  the  Dark  Chamber 
was  produced  by  the  school,  he  himself  took  the 
part  of  the  King,  and  his  superb  rendermg  of 
it  will  long  be  remembered  by  those  who  acted 
with  him  and  by  those  who  witnessed  it." 

"Surely,"  writes  the  same  educationist,  "never 
was  there'  a  leader  of  youth  so  many-sided  m 
faculty,  so  apt  to  answer  with  encouragement 
all  young  attempts  in  art.  No  one  who  has  seen 
the  work  of  the  new  Calcutta  school  of  painting 
can  doubt  that  the  movement  of  the  young 
Indian  renascence  is  already  well  under  way. 
One  of  the  leading  spirits  of  this  new  school  is 
Abanindranath   Tagore,   brother   of    the   poet; 


I  t^wriQ, 


XI 


SHANTI  NIKETAN 


147 


his  pictures  alone  convince  one  of  the  reality  of 
this  new  life.  One  of  them,  'The  End  of  the 
Journey,'  a  simple  painting  of  an  exhausted  camel 
kneeling,  head  to  ground,  against  a  sunset  back- 
ground, is  one  of  those  pictures  that  reveal  a 
world,  though  but  a  tiny  thing. 

"Such  are  the  fostering  influences  among 
which  the  youths  of  Shanti  Niketan  grow  up; 
influences  likely  to  prove  of  incalculable  good 
effect.  In  the  education  of  the  young  it  is  the 
great  personality  that  effects  the  great  results. 
Who  could  have  foreseen  when  Froebel  first 
led  his  flock  of  children  over  the  hillside,  singing 
songs  and  weaving  flower-wreaths,  that  the  spirit 
evoked  would  revolutionise  the  education  of 
children  all  the  world  over?  It  did  not  seem  a 
great  thing  when  Madame  Montessori  took 
over  the  school  for  feeble-minded  children  in 
Rome,  and  by  force  of  wisdom  and  insight  de- 
veloped in  them  a  greater  intelligence  than  was 
shown  by  the  children  of  the  normal  schools. 
Yet  what  may  not  this  system  of  voluntary  self- 
education  effect  in  the  future?  I  know  of  one 
school  where  on  one  day  in  the  week  the  children 
are  allowed  to  choose  their  own  lessons.  That 
day  is  looked  forward  to  the  whole  week  round. 


'itntv 


:^y2s 


m 


i''i. 


■ :     n 


^H 


148         RABINDRANATH  TAGORE  ch. 

"But  to  my  mind  there  is  something  more 
natural  and  delightful,  more  truly  wise,  in  this 
new  school  of  Mr.  Tagorc's  than  in  anything 
that  has  yet  been  done.  It  will  be  most  interest- 
ing for  us  all  to  watch  the  results.  There  is 
no  doubt  that  the  genius  of  Shanti  Niketan 
is  one  of  originality,  enthusiasm,  and  freshness 

of  experiment.' 

As  for  the  poet's  more  intimate  religious  in- 
fluence over  his  boys,  let  me  quote  from  Mr. 
Bose:  "His  great  personality  silently  permeates 
the  whole  atmosphere  of  the  school  and  inspires 
every  member  of  the  Institution  with  the  divmity 
and  nobiUty  of  his  character.     W^ien  he  is  in 
the  school  he  meets  the  boys  twice  a  week  regu- 
larly in  the  Mandir  or  temple,  and  speaks  to 
them  simply  and  in  his  own  homely  way  on 
the  great  ideals  of  life."    The  boys  look  forward 
eagerly  to  these  meetings  with  their  founder. 
Besides  such  regular  occasions  there  are  other 
special  days  in  the  year— the  annivcrr,aiy  of  the 
founding  of  the  school,  New  Year's  Day,  the 
festivals  associated  with  the  birth  or  death  of 
the  great  sp-ritual  teachers  of  mankind,  when 
services  are  held  in  the  Mandir.    These  services 
are   always   conducted   by   Rabindranath   him- 


"^^^^^m-v^f^^amm 


XI 


SHANTI  NIKETAN 


149 


self,  when  he  is  present  at  the  school.  Here  are 
translations  of  the  Mantras  which  are  chanted 
in  unison  b}  the  scholars  morning  and  evening, 
and  which  wonderfully  express  the  heart  of  uni- 
versal religion: 

The  Mantras  or  the  Mobning 

I.  Thou  art  our  Father.  May  we  know  Thee  as  our  Father, 
Strike  us  not.    May  we  truly  bow  to  Thee 

II.  O  Lord!  O  Father!  Take  away  all  our  sins,  and  give 
us  that  which  is  good. 

We  bow  to  Him  in  whom  is  the  happiness. 

We  bow  to  Him  in  whom  is  the  good. 

We  bow  to  Him  from  whom  comes  the  happiness. 

We  bow  to  Him  from  whom  comes  the  good. 

We  bow  to  Him  who  is  the  good. 

We  bow  to  Him  who  is  the  highest  good. 

Shanti  Shanti  Shanti  Hari  Om. 

The  Mantra  of  the  Evening 

The  God  who  is  in  fire,  who  is  in  water,  who  interpenetrates 
the  whole  world,  who  is  in  herbs,  who  is  in  trees,  to  that  God 
I  bow  down  again  and  agaui. 

A  few  of  the  school  rules  and  practical  details, 
likely  to  be  of  interest,  are  given  to  complete  the 
rough  chart: 

SliANTI  NikETAN 

I.  This  Asram  is  situated  on  high  ground  in  the  middle  of 
a  wide  plain  open  to  the  horizon  on  all  sides.   It  is  one  and  a  half 


A    4i 


■•^sr-ail? 


RABINDRANATH  TAGORE 


CH.  XI 


miles  from  Bolpur  Station  on  the  East  Indian  RaUway  (Loop 
line)  and  is  far  from  the  distractions  of  town  life. 

He  e  the  boys  are  taught  Sanskrit,  Bengah.  Enghsh 
^    thematics.  Science,  History.  Geography,  an.l  Nature  Study, 
and  may  l.e  prepare.l  for  the  Matriculation  Lxam.nat.on. 

3  Oasscs  in  agriculture  and  manual  work,  such  as  car- 
pentry, etc..  will  shortly  he  .pened.  and  eventually  every  boy 
r^eAsram  will  be  expected  to  take  up  one  of  these  pract.ca^ 

'"f  Social  attention  is  given  to  the  development  of  the 
JraUnd  spiritual  life  of  the  boys,  and  they  are  encouraged 
to  be  self-reliant,  active,  and  fearless. 

rXhe  boys  live  constantly  with  the  teachers,  and  in  every 
dormitory  one  or  two  teachers  are  placed  to  supervise  the  boys. 
T  nThe  early  morning  and  afternoon  the  boys  are  given 
light  meals;  the  two  chief  meals,  at  ix  oVbck  an^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 
evening  at  7  o'clock,  consisting  of  nee,  drl,  and  vegetable 
nirrips  toTCther  with  ghee  and  milk. 
"Meat  and  fish  are  forbidden.    There  is  a  dairy  attached 

to  the  Asram.  _:-,u 

8.  Those  boys  whose  guardians,  for  caste  reasons,  ^sh 

them  to  eat  separately  are  allowed  to  do  so.    But  if  any  boy, 

Lf  Ws  own  acc'ord,  wishes  to  eat  with  the  other  boys,  he  .s 

"t^S^^^U;^:t:^:tiedforanyboy,evenonpay. 

T:  TherisTd^ctor  with  one  assistant  who  looks  after 
boys  when  they  are  Ul.  When  boys  are  iU  they  are  placed  m 
the  hospital,  where  the  doctor  resides. 


CHAPTER  XII 


CONCLUSI'^N 


With  the  visit  of  Rabindranath  Tagore  to  our 
country  in   191 2  and   191 3  this  account  conies 
to  a  na   "'•al  pause.     If  we  anticipate  at  all, 
it  must  be  along  lines  interwoven  with  the  fu- 
ture of  India  herself.     In  his  farewell  words, 
spoken  before  he  set  sail  in  September  1913— 
amid  the  bustle  of  the  railway-platform  at  Euston 
station — he  spoke  with  concern  of  the  need  for 
a  better  understanding  between  his  people  and 
ours.    There  had  lately  been  some  terrible  floods 
in  Lower  Bengal,   affecting  the   district  below 
Bolpur  and  above  Calcutta  and  causing  great 
destruction;  and  yet  the  English  papers  hardly 
spared  a  line  to  mention  the  disaster;  and  on  this 
side  of  the  world  the  only  adequate  description 
was  that  given  by  a  Berlin  journal.    This  indif- 
ference on  our  part  to  the  everyday  welfare  of  his 
countrymen  causes  many  a  bitter  reflection  in 
those  who  are  working  with  him  for  India's  new 
deliverance. 


i^mi^-^ 


''mfms^'.^'H^^j 


n  r 


It.i: 


152         RABINDRANATH  TAGORE  oi 

In  one  of  the  early  chapters  of  this  book  it 
was  shown  how  closely   th.>  ideal  expressed  in 
his  poems  and  st«)ries  is  afTectcd  by  his  holies 
and  fears  for  India.    The  help  she  has  renck-  1 
in  the  present  war  to  Britain  is  indeed  a  sign  of 
the  times;  but  it  is  in  states  of  peace  that  the 
two  lands  and  the  allied  races  are  destined  to 
prove  the  doctrine,  which  he  and  his  father,  the 
Maharshi,  have  preached,  of  a  greater  community 
of  men  upon  earth.     Every  word  that  helps  to 
strengthen  such  a  faith  in  our  commonwealth  is 
a   godsend;   and   a   poet   like   Rabindranath   is 
more  powerful   by  his  songs  to-day  than  any 
would-be    world    dictator    in    strengthening    the 
intercourse  between  east  and  west  and  giving  to 
India  her  part  and  her  voice  in  the  commonalty 
of  nations.     Such  a  message  as  that  implied  in 
the  eighty-fifth  song  of  Gitanjali  should  be  read 
over  again  at  the  end  of  his  political  testament: 

When  the  warriors  marched  back  again  to  their  master's 
hall  where  did  they  hide  their  power? 

They  iiad  dropped  the  sword  and  dropped  the  bow  and 
the  ar^ow:  peace  was  in  their  foreheads,  and  they  had  left  the 
fruits  of  their  life  behind  them  on  the  day  they  marched  buck 
again  to  their  master's  hall. 

Another  scries  of  Gitanjali  has  been  written 
in  the  last  year  or  two,  not  yet  published  in 


May  6,  1414. 
From  a  photograph  liy  Johnston  &  Hoffmann. 


Sfsixi;^ 


>E*?V: 


I 

I'' 


In 


.»!  *- 


.11 


i-.^Xi?W^ 


^m^^m^m^'s^m^^mi^^hrfi  <r:^.i- 


xn 


CONCLUSION 


I  $3 


a  book;  when  it  is  wn  shall  find  that  it  takes 
the  realisation  of  these  ideas  yet  a  stage  farther 
towards  their  goal.  In  Nature's  Revenge  its 
hero,  the  Sanyisi  or  recluse  and  would-be 
triumpher  over  nature,  thought  to  solve  the 
old  troubles  of  the  l.uman  intelligence  by  the 
victory  of  the  mind  over  the  heart  of  man.  In 
the  new  Gitanjali  the  poet  looks  for  that  recon- 
ciliation of  the  two  selves  and  the  spirit  of  the 
atom  with  the  spirit  of  the  universe,  which  calls 
also  for  the  reconciliation  of  the  races.  It  is  all 
part  of  the  message  hidden  in  a  saying  of  the 
Upanishads: 

The  ether  which  is  around  us  is  the  same  as  the  ether  within 
us,  and  that  is  the  ether  within  the  heart.' 

The  pages  of  SddJiand  showed  us  that  its 
writer  expressed  something  new,  something  closer 
to  ourselves,  in  the  relation  of  his  genius  to  the 
genius  of  his  race.  He  has  drawn  upon  human 
nature  and  found  there  that  living  presence 
whose  body  is  spirit,  "whose  form  is  light,"  and 
that  self  which  is  smaller  than  a  com  of  rice  or  a 
canary-seed  kernel,  yet  greater  than  earth  or 
heaven,  or  than  all  the  worlds.    The  whole  bur- 

^  Khandogya-V panishad,  iii.  1.5. 


RABINDRANATH  TAGORK 


cv. 


\m 


154 

den  of  his  JM^gs  and  his  writings  gow  to  assure 
us  that  he  does  not  stand  in  the  regard  of  a  saint 
or  a  Rishi  who  is  above  our  common  nature  or 
apart  from  it.    He  is  of  us  and  has  felt  our  pas- 
sions ami  apiKtitos;  he  has  known  the  love  of  man 
and   woman,    soi..   and    daughters,    and    small 
children.      He   has   experienced   the   trouble    it 
takes  to  make  a  poet  out  of  a  man,  and  a  man 
out  of  a  |x>et.    In  one  of  the  songs  in  The  Gar- 
dener he  tells  how  in  the  morning  the  singer 
cast  his  net  into  the  sea  and  dragged  up  from  the 
salt  depths  stri..ige  things  and  beautiful -some 
which  slionc  like  the  smile,  some  that  glistened 
like  the  tears,  some  flushed  like  the  cheeks  of  the 
bride.    At  the  end  of  the  day  he  carries  them  to 
his  love,  who  sits  in  her  garden,  but  she  despises 
them.    Then  he  realises  that  they  are  not  worthy 
of  her;  and  one  by  one,  as  the  night  goes  on,  he 
flings  them  out  into  the  street.    But  in  the  morn- 
ing travellers  come  and  pick  them  up  and  carry 
them  into  far  countries.    This  is  the  song,  or, 
if  you  like,  the  parable,  of  the  poet's  lost  en- 
deavour,  out   of   which   spring   the   ideas   that 
travel  all  the  worid  over.     It  is  so  with  these 
birds  of  passage,   his  songs.     You   surprise   in 
them,  as  you  read,  that  orient  stream  which, 


Xll 


CONCLUSION 


ISS 


like  the  rihing  sun,  is  (leslined  to  flow  the  world 
over;  and  the  true  potts  arc  able  by  their  votive 
songs  to  make  themselves  and  their  writings 
conductors  to  that  luminous  stream. 

It  is  only  in  our  own  time  that  the  day-spring 
of  India  has  at  last  found  its  way  into  the  outer 
world.  Many  signs  have  seemed  latterly  to 
point  to  the  fulfilling  of  an  old  promise  of  the 
East.  Workers  like  Max  MuUer,  Professor  Rhys 
Davids,  and  the  translators  of  the  Mahabarata 
and  the  Rantayana,  the  Vedic  Hymns  and  Sacred 
Books  of  the  Kast,  have  laid  open  the  literature. 
It  o'Jy  needed  that  the  heaven-sent  intermediary 
shruld  come  who  would  set  the  seal  of  his  art  on 
the  work  of  the  scholars,  and  bring  tne  wisdom 
of  India  home  to  the  western  men. 

When  we  take  one  of  those  love-songs  of 
The  Gardener,  in  which  the  lyrist  sings  natu- 
rally as  the  first  blackbird  in  spring,  wc  are  aware 
of  an  older  music  than  that  declared  in  the  o[)en 
notes.  The  emotion  of  a  thousand  springs  en- 
joyed before  that  particular  morning  is  in  them, 
echoing  cadenc-s  that  were  heard  in  the  hymns 
of  the  Vedas  a  thousand  years  ago.  If  wc  turn 
from  those  lyric  pages  to  Sadliana  wc  find  that  it 
too  quickens  immemorial  ideas  in  its  pages.    It 


156         RABINDRANATH  TAGORE  ch 

expresses  the  Indian  mind  under  new  religious 
forms,  more  constructive,  more  intelligible  to  us, 
than  the  old;  and  after  pausing  to  make  us  feel 
the  habitual  dxfTcrence  between  east  and  west,  it 
goes  on  to  ix)int  the  way  to  a  common  deliverance 
and  a  spiritual  conmionwealth. 

Wc  must  turn  to  the  Vedanta,  and  the  doc- 
trines f;athered  up  in  the  Brahma  Sutras  fourteen, 
fifteen   centuries   ago,   and   to   their   great   e  •- 
ponent,  Sankara  Acharya,  if  we  would  under- 
c*and  both  what  the  old  philosophy  was  and 
what  the  new  portends  when  it  is  refired  b^    a 
mind  Uke   Rabindranath  Tagore's.     The  ideal 
structure,  reared  out  of  the  Vedantic  ideas  by 
Sankara,   is   the  highest,   it  is   claimed,   which 
eastern   thought   has   built.     Its   teaching   has 
become  part  of  the  very  "life  blood  of  the  na- 
tion."    Names  like  Sankara's  are  the  ties  be- 
tween the  old  wisdom  and  the  new. 

When  Zarathustra  asked  Ahura  to  tell  him 
his  name,  among  the  many  he  gave  in  reply 
were  two  which  are  remarkable— the  seer  or 
"discerne."  and  the  "healer."  They  might 
serve  very  well  to  mark  the  kindred  functions 
which  Rabindranath  Tagore  made  his  own  in 
that  later  phase  of  his  career,  when  the  trouble 


XII 


CONCLUSION 


IS7 


of  his  own  days  had  made  him  more  keenly 
alive  both  to  the  new  predicament  of  India  and 
to  the  needs  of  men  and  women  all  the  world 
over.  His  temperament,  his  love  of  nature, 
and  the  Hfe  of  meditation  that  the  Indian  sun 
favours,  might  have  led  him  to  retir  from  the 
struggle  for  the  new  order.  A  sharper  force 
drove  him  to  look  to  the  ailment  of  his  time, 
and  he  became,  instead  of  its  ascetic,  or  its  her- 
mit in  the  wilderness,  its  healer,  its  discemer 
and  its  lyric  poet  in  one. 

THE  END 


i)\ 


msMmm 


i 


['  jffiii'iv- 


U4-  < 


^i^'i*^'-,r^Sf«s; 


The  Works  of  Rabindranath  Tagore 


'■:^m^:^^'^--f^'^:Ji^i^^^^ 


i . 


Songs  of  Kabir 


Translated  by  Rabindranath  TaRon-  v.ith  the 
Assiatanco  of  Evelyn  Undcrhill 

Clidh,  Umo,  Sl.25.  Limp  leather  $1.50 
"Not  only  stu<lont9  of  Imlian  litoraturo  or  of  comparative 
religions  will  welcome  this  striking  translation  of  a  fifteenth- 
century  Indian  mystic.  i:very  .  n.  who  is  capable  of  respond- 
ing to  an  appeal  to  cast  off  the  swathings  of  fonnalnm  and 
come  out  into  spiritual  freedom,  evcrj'  one  who  is  sensitive  to 
pm>try  that,  while  hij^hly  sj-mbolical,  is  yet  clear  and  s.mplo 
and  full  of  beauty,  will  read  it  with  interest  and  with  heart- 
quickening."— .V.  Y.  Times. 

"Wonderfully  graphic,  convc>nng  the  universal  thought  of 
the  Hindu  poet,  yet  retaining  mystic  Eastern  s>'mbolism  in 
expressing  it.  Through  his  o-^  sympathy  and  appreciation, 
the  translator  has  been  able  to  reveal  in  EngUsh  the  soul  of 
the  Eost."— Baltimore  Sun. 

"The  trend  of  Mr.  Tagore's  mystical  genius  makes  him  a 
peculiarly  sjmpathetic  interpreter  of  Kabir's  vision  and 
thought,  and  the  book  is  perhaps  one  of  the  most  important 
which  that  famous  Hindu  has  introduced  to  the  western 
world."— Hari/ord  Post. 

"Upon  the  reaUty  of  life  he  erects  his  faith,  and  buttresses 
it  with  whatever  of  devotional  good  he  may  find  in  any  re- 
ligion. No  ascetic,  Kabir  pictures  the  mystic  world  of  lus  be- 
lief with  a  beautiful  richness  of  ,ymho]lsm."-Philadelphm 
Ledger. 


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"The  real  poetical  imagination  of  it  is  unchange- 
able; the  allegory,  subtle  and  profound  and  yet  sim- 
ple, is  cast  into  the  form  of  a  dramatic  narrative, 
which  moves  the  unconventional  freedom  to  a  fmely 
impressive  climax;  and  the  reader,  who  began  in  idle 
curiosity,  fmds  his  intelligence  more  and  more  en- 
gaged until,  when  he  turns  the  last  page,  he  has  the 
feeling  of  one  who  has  been  moving  in  worlds  not 
realized,  and  communing  with  great  if  mysterious 
presences."— r//c  London  Globe. 

"The  most  careless  reader  can  hardly  proceed  far 
into  these  inspired  pages  without  realizing  that  he 
is  in  the  presence  of  holy  things-of  an  allegory  of 

the  soul  such  as  has  not  before  been  told  in  the  Eng- 

Ush  tongue."— C/»"cago  Evening  Post. 

"Carried  a  broader  and  more  luxurious  symboUsm 

than  'Lhi^ra'  or  'The  Post-Office,'  and  gives  new 

expression  to  subtly  differentiated  phases  of  that  rapt 

raysticd  devotion  to  the  Deity  which  motivated  the 

'Gitanjali.'  "—Independent. 


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Gitanjali 


(Song  Offerings) 


Translated  by  the  Author  from  the  Original  Bcngah. 

With  an  Introduction  by  W.  B.  Yeats  and  a 

portrait  of  the  author  by  W.  Rothcnstein 

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"Mr.  Tagorc's  translations  are  of  trance-like 
beauty."— Hm;  London  Athenaum. 

"  it  is  the  essence  of  all  poetry  of  East  and  West 
alike-the  language  of  the  soul."-r//c  Indian  Maga- 
zine &•  Review. 

"I  have  carried  the  manuscript  of  these  transla- 
tions about  with  me  for  days,  reading  it  in  railway 
trains,  or  on  the  top  of  omnibuses  and  in  restaurants, 
and  I  have  often  had  to  close  it  lest  some  stranger 
would  see  how  much  it  moved  me.  Those  lyrics— 
which  are,  in  the  original,  my  Indians  tell  me,  full  of 
subtlety,  of  rhythm,  of  untranslatable  delicacies  of 
colour,  of  metrical  invention-display  in  their  thought 
a  worid  I  have  dreamed  of  all  my  Ufe  long: '-William 
Buller  Ycals. 

"These  poems  are  representative  of  the  highest 
degree  of  culture,  and  yet  instinct  with  the  simpUcity 
and  directness  of  the  dweller  on  the  soil."-.V.  Y.  Sun. 


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The  Crescent  Moon:  Child  Poems 

Translated  by  the  Author  from  the  Original  Bengali. 
With  8  Illustrations  in  Color 

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As  the  title  implies  this  little  volume  contains  poems 
devoted  to  the  subject  of  children.  The  illustrations 
are  reproduced  in  color  from  drawings  by  native 
artists. 

"Comes  closest  to  life  as  we  know  it  and  to  the 
spirit  of  the  West.  .  .  .  We  can  accept  his  lyrics 
of  children  in  full  comprehension  of  their  worth,  even 
though  we  have  few  poets  who  t.^eak  with  such  un- 
derstanding."—r//c  Outlook. 

"Nothing  could  be  more  charming  than  the  at- 
tractive child-poems  in  this  book.  Tagore  is  at  once 
a  student  of  religion,  a  mirror  of  India  and  an  inter- 
preter of  human  life.  The  genuine  humanity  of  his 
writings  is  nowhere  more  apparent  than  in  this  at- 
tractive hook. ''—Advance. 

"Tagore  is  probably  the  greatest  living  poet,  and 
this  book  of  child-poems  has  the  bloom  of  all  young 
life  upon  it  faithfully  transcribed  by  genius."— 
Metropolitan. 


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Po«'tn.H  Written  in  lib*  Youth.  Trftfi^-lat**!  by  the 
AuUior  fioin  the  OriKiiml  lJ.'ngiili 

('i)th,  nmo,  St  J').    Umj)  hatha  it. BO 

"  .  .  the  very  stuff  of  imnRinatiou  an.l  yet  rhv  and  vivid 
with  a  fr.-sh  1  nd  dcli.iou.M  fancy.  Tluir  l)<^'mty  i.s  its  .l.li.utn 
a«  the  reflection  of  tlu-  eolour  of  m  llowcr."--77u;  Wcdmmskr 
Gazette. 

Mr  TtiRore's  traii-shitiona  prescno  not  only  all  that  Is  esscn- 
tial  und  ofmal  in  his  iKK'try,  but  much  of  the  stnuiRo  m.-iRic. 
Indeed  the  Mih>t:xnce  of  it  is  of  surh  .suim-ino  value  and  vitality 
that  no  tran^luion  .-ould  have  kilknl  it.  Abov  all.  it^  sun- 
plieity  and  it.  tmasparen.y  survive;  for  they  arc  of  the  8ub- 
atance  of  this  jHxf  s  virion.  ...  In  the  jKKnn.-^  of  this  mystic 
the  worU  upi-eors  r.o  lonRer  in  its  brutality,  its  vehemence  its 
Mwift  yet  d.'nH-  fiuiditv;  it  is  seized  in  the  ver>'  monumt  of  ita 
pas-siuK  and  fixed  in  the  clarity  and  stilh',....s  of  lus  vu^oa.- 
May  Sinclair. 

"They  have  a  sensuous  glow,  a  warm  appreciation  of  the 
flosh,  that  mi'^ht  lead  on'3  to  call  them  Swinbuniian,  were  it 
not  that  ev(>r  and  anon  crci^w  i"  the  call  of  the  sp-.itual,  the 
reeoRnition  of  the  truth  that  tho  lle«h  palls  ami  only  the  soul 
Kitisties."—ii< //«'"",  Miniwnpoli.<. 

"Tagore's  poems  are  d.'vot  ions -mystical,  sublimated  ccs- 
t.asy  in  which  the  brutalized  pa.-sions  of  the  world  have  no 
place  or  "oeinR.  •  •  •  Tli^'V  ^re  the  thoughts  of  a  secr-the 
perfect  union  of  beauty  and  truth  in  pocsy."-i?mew  of  Re- 
views. 


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Clatfi,  ISmo,il.OO.    Lmpl'athfr,tt ..50 

filled  with  ton.l(rpathcm(xnaKiMrituan)oauty.  Therfl 
^r.  two  act«.  an.l  th.  nton-  ..  ilu.t  of  a  fra.l  littlo  Indian  la.1 
oondanneU  to  Mvlu^ion  and  inartion  l.y  ill  h.-alth.  llo  n.ak«, 
a  now  w.,rl.l  for  hin.^.lf.  l.ow.«v.«r,  l.y  \m  unaRination  an.l  in- 
Hatiablo  curiosity,  and  the  i«i«m.r«by  brim?  the  world  of  action 
to  him.  The  i>lay  luw  l)Ocn  prc».-nt(>d  in  Enftland  by  the  Irtsli 
I'layen.,  and  fully  adapts  iusolf  to  the  rhannin^  simplicity  and 
clumn  which  arc  their  principal  characterUtic.."-/'/.i/«.  PuUic 
Ledger. 

"A  l>oautiful  and  appealing  piece  of  dramatic  vvork/'-ZJo.- 
im  Transcript. 

"Once  more  TaRore  demonstrates  the  universality  of  hit 
genius;  once  more  he  «hows  how  art  an.l  true  feeling  know  no 
racial  and  no  religi.)us  lincs."-A'cn««cfc:/  Post. 

"One  rcadM  in  'The  Past  Ofhce'  hi.s  own  will  of  symbolism. 
Simplicity  and  a  p.'r^'a.lin«,  apjH.ding  pathos  are  the  quaUtie. 
traiusmittcd  to  it.  lines  by  the  poet."-.V.  Y.  World. 

"He  writes  from  his  soul;  there  is  neith.T  lK)mba8t  nor 
didacticism.  His  poems  brii.K  one  to  the  quiet  places  where  the 
soul  speaks  to  the  soul  surely  but  serenely."-.V.  Y.  American. 


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A  Play  in  One  Act 

Clot/i,  nmo,  $i.uo.    imp  leather  $1.50 

"VVc  (litl  not  look  for  an  Oriental  even  though  a 
sccr,  to  write  a  book  (especially  twenty-five  years 
ago  when  thi^  was  written)  that  might  serve  as  ex- 
umpU-  to  the  most  advanced  amonj;  modern  Occi- 
dental women— yet  this  i^  ju>t  what  Tagore  has  done. 
IL  is  at  once  as  clear  and  as  profound  as  a  mountain 
pool."— A',  y.  Times. 

"  Over  and  over  again  we  fmd  that  perfume  of  phr;  -"c 
wliich  has  always  marked  Mr.  Tagore's  work  at  . 
best.  .  .  .  He  has  given  us  the  soul  of  the  East  dis- 
embodied of  its  sensuality,  and  within  it  shines  the 
most  perfect  tribute  to  true  womanhood  and  its 
claims."— r//e  Pall  Mall  Gazette. 

"The  play  is  told  with  the  simplicity  and  wonder 
of  imagery  always  characteristic  of  Rabindranath 
TixgovQ."— Cleveland  Plain  Dealer. 


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Confahw  notno  of  llif  l.ffiitr«  vUii.h  Mr.  Tanorc  han  Ihvh 
iltli\Tiiii«  iti  tli<-  nuirw  of  tlii<  y.  ar  to  luw  lui.U.  ik'.-h  in  ()xf(»ril, 
l...t»U.n  uml  rUwh.  rt' ,  luul  iiHwt  of  which  wore  also  rrml  lj«'fore 
llurvuril  liiivfntity. 

Th.'  Hir.rsMive  titU-s*  to  th«  hoturcH  an":  I.  Thf  U<liiti<-t»  of 
th.-  Itulivichiul  to  tho  rtiivcrM'.  II.  t^ml  I'otwiouMiu-^H. 
in. The l»rol)l'm of  F.vil.  IV. The T.-ohl.tii t)f  Stlf.  \  .  Ucali. n- 
ti.Hi  ill  I^.w,  VI.  !{r.alit!alion  m  .Anion.  VII.  T\\v  Ui':ili«ilioii 
of  Ikauty.    VIII.  The  HciJi  ati.it.  of  il>.-  Infmii"'. 

"TiiKon-'i  ohHajM  t!»ori'  an*  li^Iit  of  tlicm  iu  thi-<  volunn'  - 
vrv  an  iuti-lUrtiial  stiniuhn,  a  .spiritual  toni<-.  In  uiitinjj;  ulioul 
thf  pnihl.in  of  ('xi.>t('n(v  Uu  uinn.T  of  lh(»  101:5  Nolnl  I'ri/c 
for  ulfulisti.-  literature slin th  cK .ir  of  tl.r  iu>  k^  (.f  m<  Mriaii  rt)n- 
trovorsy.  IIi-  n)nil.iii"H  profundity  wilh  a  «itnpruity  of  .stylf 
ana  u  *nun»  that  puts  liini  v.ithiii  t!ti-  gnutp  of  the  uvoraK« 
r.a.iis.  Tli..u:;h  ho  writi  .  as  a  Hindu,  Ta-uro  can  wo  tin; 
fiorious  li.iw  ^  i;.  t '  '"  pliilostii'l'V  "^  <'"'  '"i-"*-  '"  '^'^  '""•'y  '■""♦'^•^''^ 
' Ueali-^.ition  i"  Anion '  ho  kw ■  >  n.^  a  -t ril^iu-.; orilioal  ooniparison 
of  i:a>t  li.ii.in  rolii^ions  idoali.-ni  with  the  triud  iu  tho  wcdtem 
world."— /.i'A '■■''•;/  /J'V'."'. 

"Tho  hroad  anil  snnpathf  tie  treatment  of  tho  nubjoct  should 
rcc(.mnior\<!  i*  to  intolligont  roaJers  of  whatever  type  of  ro- 
Ugiou." —liuiton  Ikrald. 


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